ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) said on Monday that the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is conspiring to further weaken Pakistan’s fragile economy.
PEW President Dr Murtaz Mughal said that the FATF’s decision to keep Pakistan on its grey list till June is “political, disappointing, and against the merit”. He deplored that the decision was made despite Pakistan’s significant progress on the recommended actions.
“People are terming the global watchdog’s decision as biased, since many countries have been taken off the watch list despite their performance being below Pakistan,” he noted, adding that Pakistan has complied with 24 of the 27 actions and is acting to fulfil the remaining three conditions to eliminate terror financing.
Dr Murtaza Mughal said Pakistan’s significant progress towards FATF’s plan could be gauged from the unprecedented increase in home remittances. “However, we have no other option but to show progress on the rest of the action plan otherwise there will be an economic cost.”
He stressed that the FATF should not work as a tool for superpowers to ignore countries that are in their good books and penalise the nations which are not.
Presently, there are 18 countries in the FATF grey list while two states, North Korea and Iran, are on the blacklist.
