pakistan 
Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Shaukat Fayaz Tarin said Friday that the countries having positions in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) “are not our friends.”
He said Pakistan fulfilled 27 out of 28 conditions put forth by the global financial watchdog.
The Finance Minister was responding to a supplementary question in the upper House of Parliament.
“We achieved our targets, hoping that Pakistan would be out of the grey list. Hopefully we will be shifted to the white list in the next FATF review.”
Tarin also disclosed details of the conditions under which Islamabad had received $3 billion from Saudi Arabia.
It must be remembered that a much-awaited $3 billion tranche was deposited in the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) by Saudi Arabia on December 4, 2021.
Shaukat Tarin said the country’s exports were increasing whilst the trade deficit was reduced by 1.5 billion dollars last month. He said the reserves of the SBP had risen in the last year.
Tarin informed the House that Pakistan would utilise the Saudi oil facility by the next month.
“We have kept the entire burden of international petroleum prices on ourselves. We have stopped it from falling on the people,” Tarin said.
“Our goal is to move out of the FATF’s wrath in its next plenary meeting,” the Finance Minister said.
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Separately, Minister for Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi said there were no reasons for keeping Islamabad on the grey list under the FATF. He said Pakistan had a brilliant compliance rate on placed conditions; however, he cautioned that political affiliations might block the way for Islamabad’s endeavours of exclusion from the grey list. “We have tick-marked all major conditions of the FATF. There are no technical grounds for keeping Pakistan on the grey list. There are only political considerations now,” Qureshi said.
