PM Imran seeks debt relief to pump money into health sector

–PM says several developing countries don’t have fiscal space to strengthen healthcare system due to debt-servicing

–Says govt decided to ease lockdown due to unemployment and its inability to take care of everyone  

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday urged the global community to provide debt relief to the developing world, especially the sub-continent, saying several countries in the developing world do not possess the fiscal space to divert resources to the healthcare sector amid a deadly pandemic.

Addressing a session of the World Economic Forum (WEF) via video link, the prime minister said he talked to several leaders of the developing world who were facing the same problem as Pakistan or any other developing country.

“The G20 has come up with a debt relief plan but it needs more details and work. Let me just put it this way: many of the developing countries face this situation where, because of their debt-servicing, their fiscal space has contracted and they are unable to cope with this challenge of health facilities.

“The reason why there should be a debt relief and the G20 is looking into it is because we need to divert those resources to health and also to environment and, unfortunately, that space is not there,” he added.

“There has to be a way of picking up countries,” he implored, adding that the “exports are falling as well as the remittances”. He said Pakistan “depends a lot on the remittance from the Gulf countries and due to the fall in oil prices that has had an effect on it”.

According to the PM, the upcoming year isn’t just a challenge for Pakistan, it’s a challenge for the entire globe because “we are all connected”.

There has to be more interaction between the countries in dealing with this challenge so far, he said, adding: “When it hit the countries, they took unprecedented measures so every country looked inside and became insular. I feel that we are connected and the response has to be global.

Speaking about the economy, he said: “Just before this pandemic hit us, we had managed to balance our twin budgets — the current account and fiscal deficit. After very tough reforms, we had thought of the growth of the economy.

However, the country was now battling to overcome the ramification of the two-month-long lockdown. “We have geared up and our economic think-tanks are mulling over how we are going to deal with the coming year,” he said, calling it a bigger challenge.

“We, in Pakistan, we have 25 million workers who are either daily wagers or get paid weekly or are self-employed. When we [impose a] lockdown like the whole of the world to stop the spread of the virus all these people became unemployed.

“When we are talking about 25 million workers, we are talking about 25 million families. And actually it has affected around almost 120-150 million people [who] face stark poverty.

“Unless the men and the women work, they cannot feed their families. What my government did was we launched a cash programme and reached nearly 15 million families with cash transfers but this is only a short-term solution.”

“Therefore, despite the raising cases in our country, we have decided to ease our lockdown and reopen our construction industry so that people can find employment because there is no way that the government can provide for all. The only way we can do that is by providing employment.

“The way forward that we have this year as a nation is that we realise that we have to live with this virus at least until a vaccine comes out and balances it. We have raised a volunteer force in this regard — of one million volunteers — who will help the administration as it is already overburdened and so are the law enforcement agencies.

“This volunteer force will encourage people not to have large gatherings and spread awareness among masses to follow the SOPs [standard operating procedures] necessary to stem the virus.

Speaking about the action taken to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, he said: “The experience of the developed world is completely different to what we are facing in the developing world. We’re not experiencing the same speed at which the virus had spread in the West.”

However, the number of cases are still rising, and the country has yet to reach the peak, he said, adding that the government has developed a “very good National Command and Control Centre [NCOC] and the whole idea is that we aim to balance” the lockdown and employment rate.