Fostering healthy diplomatic ties

Pakistan’s state coffers received a boost on March 12 as KSA announced it will provide $122m in financial assistance

Pakistan’s state coffers received a substantial boost on March 12 as Saudi Arabia announced that it will provide $122 million in financial assistance to Islamabad for development projects in a variety of fields. The financing includes five grants of $67 million and a $55 million loan. The agreements for the grants and loan were signed by the vice-chairman and managing director of the Saudi Fund for Development, Yousaf Ibrahim Al-Bassam, and Secretary of the Economic Affairs Division, Tariq Bajwa. The funding is to be used towards building a Home Economics and Management Sciences College in Islamabad, houses in the earthquake-stricken areas of Balochistan’s Awaran district, and government buildings in the province.

Riyadh, in coordination with UN agencies, will also be pumping money into an initiative aimed at mitigating the effects of natural disasters in parts of Pakistan as well as helping internally displaced persons. This is a welcome development, given how precarious the country’s finances are and the enormity of its development challenges. The signing ceremony of the financial assistance package coincided with the visit of the prime minister and the army chief to the kingdom to witness a large-scale international military exercise, named ‘Northern Thunder’. The trip intended to reinforce Islamabad’s ties with Riyadh after some hiccups in the relationship in recent months, especially following Pakistan’s refusal to participate in Saudi military missions in Yemen to quell a Houthi rebellion there. It is important that Pakistan maintains friendly relations with such an important financial backer such as Saudi Arabia as our own fiscal position remains far from enviable. We also rely heavily on the remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis residing in Saudi Arabia and there is also the fact that the kingdom has supported us in historical times of need. But at the same time, Islamabad cannot afford to alienate its neighbour Iran, either, with whom the Saudis have an adversarial relationship as both vie for regional hegemony. Iran is emerging as an important regional power ever since the lifting of sanctions on it. Given this, Pakistan needs to perform a delicate balancing act and maintain its neutrality when it comes to important regional political matters, as it did in the case of the Yemen war. That will ensure that the country is able to maintain healthy ties with two important regional states.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 12^th, 2016.

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