ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday ordered authorities to investigate a roadside bomb blast in the country’s southwestern Turbat city that killed one person, vowing to bring the culprits to book and continue the state’s war against militants. 

The incident follows the Jan. 4 blast near Turbat when at least five paramilitary soldiers were killed and over two dozen others injured after a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device targeted a bus carrying security personnel. 

Monday’s roadside bomb blast in Turbat killed one person, state broadcaster Radio Pakistan reported. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the incident. 

“Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemns the roadside bomb blast in Turbat,” a statement from Sharif’s office said. “The prime minister has directed the incident be investigated.”

Sharif said those responsible for the blast should be immediately identified and punished. 

“We will continue the war against terrorism until Pakistan is cleansed of it,” Sharif said. “Those who carry out such terrorist activities are enemies of the development of Balochistan.”

Balochistan, a mineral-rich province sharing borders with Iran and Afghanistan, has faced an insurgency for decades, which has intensified in recent years. The Baloch separatists accuse the Pakistani state of exploiting the region’s resources without adequately benefiting its population. 

However, Pakistani governments deny the allegations, saying they have launched several development projects to promote prosperity and improve the lives of residents in the province.

The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), with a strong presence in Balochistan, has emerged as a major threat to the state, carrying out deadly attacks, including suicide bombings, to target Pakistani security forces. 

According to provincial administration data, Balochistan witnessed a dramatic surge in militant violence in 2024, resulting in about 300 deaths in over 550 attacks.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is preparing to debut yuan-denominated bonds this year to shore up finances, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb told Bloomberg in an interview Monday, saying his government remained optimistic it would meet the terms of an International Monetary Fund bailout program.

The South Asian nation is planning to raise up to $250 million from Chinese investors over the next six to nine months, Aurangzeb said of the plan that comes as Pakistan’s sovereign rating has been upgraded recently by all three credit agencies. Aurangzeb said he expected further upgrades, and the challenge was to get into a “single-B” category, which would allow the country to return to global bond markets to raise funds.

“The country is very keen to tap the Panda bonds and the Chinese capital markets,” Aurangzeb said on the sidelines of the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong. “We have been remiss as a country not to tap it previously.”

The latest figure is slightly lower than the $300 million the finance minister was targeting in a March 2024 interview. China International Capital Corporation is advising Pakistan on the issuance of Panda bonds, Aurangzeb said.

Pakistan has enjoyed some stability from two years ago when an IMF bailout deal was in limbo and inflation and interest rates were above 20 percent. The government is optimistic it will meet the terms for an ongoing $7 billion loan, the finance minister said. 

The IMF, which is scheduled to visit Pakistan next month, wants Pakistan to broaden its tax base and reach a tax-to-GDP ratio of 13.5 percent, from 10 percent in December, Aurangzeb said.

“We are well on our way to achieve that target, not only because the IMF is saying that but because from my perspective the country needs to get into that benchmark to make our fiscal situation sustainable,” he said.

After Pakistan clinched the IMF bailout last year, it has been getting some reprieve, including from cooling inflation that provides space for policymakers to cut borrowing costs further and help prop up a nation that remains hammered by structural weaknesses. Stronger remittances, a bright spot, have also helped shore up currency reserves.

The rupee, as a result, rose about 2 percent in 2024, among best performers in emerging markets. The benchmark stock index outperformed nearly all other equities markets last year.

Pakistan still remains in a tough spot.

The government has to increase taxes to secure a fresh $1 billion loan tranche from the IMF or miss the lender’s tax revenue requirement for fiscal year ending June 2025 which could put the bailout at risk, Bloomberg Economics’ Ankur Shukla said in a note on Jan. 8.

Having gone through 25 loan programs over half a century, Pakistan must institute durable reforms in key areas of the energy sector, tax collection and state-owned enterprises to end a cycle of indebtedness, Aurangzeb told an IMF forum in October.

On Monday, Aurangzeb said the nation’s gross domestic product would probably expand 3.5 percent in the fiscal year ending June. Pakistan had set a 3.6 percent economic growth target after a 2.5 percent expansion the prior financial year.

The State Bank of Pakistan, which has cut the benchmark rate to the lowest in more than two years, is scheduled to announce its decision on Jan. 27 while inflation is expected to stabilize within the target range of 5 percent–7 percent in the next 12 months.

“We are into that phase of stabilization,” Aurangzeb said. “Now where do we go from here? We have to focus on sustainable growth. We are now very focused on fundamentally changing the DNA of the economy to make it export-led.”