DAVOS, Jan 30: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has urged the Asian Development Bank to play a leading role in setting up a consortium for financing the $8 billion Bhasha-Diamer dam project.

During a meeting with ADB president Haruhiko Kurodo here on Friday, the prime minister also sought help for continuing Higher Education Commission’s scholarship programme and establishing an engineering university in collaboration with renowned institutions of the world.

He thanked the ADB for timely disbursing the first tranche of $500 million in September last year under the “Pakistan Accelerating Transformation Programme” initiative and expressed the hope that the second tranche would be disbursed by the second quarter of this year.

Mr Gilani briefed Mr Kurodo on structural reforms undertaken with difficult decisions like withdrawal of subsidies.

Mr Kurodo praised the fiscal measures taken by the government and expressed the hope that the process of structural reforms would continue.

He assured Mr Gilani that the ADB would consider Pakistan’s request for financing the dam project and other programmes in energy, infrastructure and education sectors.

Also on Friday, speaking at a session on “Reviving Global Economic Growth”, Mr Gilani suggested that a special session of the United Nations General Assembly be conveyed to chart out a course on future economic policies. He called for changing rules of international finance institutions in line with the existing global realities.

He said the World Bank and IMF had also suggested that these policies should be changed because they had become

outdated.—APP