ISLAMABAD, April 5: The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) will provide $600 million to Pakistan for importing crude oil during 2004-05. This was stated by Vice-President of IDB Dato Dr Syed Jaffar Aznan in a meeting with Dr Salman Shah, adviser to the prime minister on finance and revenue, here on Tuesday. According to the details, the IDB has extended a syndicated facility of $100 million to Pakistan for the import of crude oil and petroleum products and $500 million for financing of crude oil imports during the current financial year.

The syndicated Murabaha financing has been arranged from international market for Pakistan with the participation of 14 international banks from Europe, Middle East and Far East. Pakistan will be the beneficiary of the arrangements while PARCO is the executing agency for the imports.

Dr Aznan said that signs of prosperity were visible in Pakistan and many banks of Middle East were anxious to invest in this part of the world.

Dr Salman Shah suggested to the IDB to play an effective role to bring investors to Pakistan from the member countries having huge surpluses as Pakistan offers tremendous opportunities of investment in various sectors including infrastructure, power, water, construction of dams, human resource development, education, health and tourism.

The investment climate in Pakistan, he pointed out, was business friendly and lot of foreign investors from Middle East, Malaysia and China were exploring the possibilities of investment in different sectors.

“Pakistan can become a lighthouse for other member countries because it has the competitive advantage of skilled labour force, fast growing market and geo- strategic location”, he said.

Dr Shah offered assistance to the IDB to develop a Pakistan specific country strategy paper so as to increase the trade financing and investment from the member countries to Pakistan.

“We are gradually overcoming the problem of negative perception of Pakistan abroad and the economy is moving in the right direction as more and more foreign investors are reposing confidence in Pakistan”, the adviser said.