Pakistan innovates in times of Covid-19: PM

Says govt incentives to keep businesses afloat; out-of-job daily wagers to be employed in 10 Billion Tree Tsunami

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said the incentives announced by the central bank for the business community would prevent massive unemployment in the county because of the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic as the health minister warned against easing restrictions at the current stage of the outbreak.

“[The incentives are] part of our policy of balancing between protecting people through a targeted lockdown and ensuring the vulnerable and needy are provided for,” the premier tweeted along with a video clip of State Bank Governor Reza Baqir announcing a refinance scheme for businesses to discourage them from laying off workers amid the pandemic.

The prime minister added that the poor were being provided with financial assistance through the Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme and the government had also decided to give the relief of tax refunds to the business community, resume activities in the construction industry and keep the agricultural sector open.

“The SBP’s initiatives for businesses during the Covid-19 [outbreak] will help keep businesses afloat and prevent massive unemployment.”

PM Imran later tweeted that with daily-wage workers out of jobs, the government was employing many of them for the massive 10 Billion Tree Campaign.

“Pakistan innovates in the time of Covid-19,” he tweeted sharing a video of the workers.

“Impacting lives and the planet positively at the same time,” he added. “Every initiative counts.”

Separately, Health Minister Dr Zafar Mirza warned that easing the restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the virus or not taking precautionary measures seriously could cause a spike in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

Addressing a news conference along with Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, Dr Mirza said some people compared statistics and mistakenly believed that the coronavirus crisis in Pakistan was not as severe as it was in other countries.

“This kind of thinking is a serious mistake,” he added. "We should consider imposing more restrictions if we can.”

Speaking on the occasion, Umar, who is also the head of the National Command and Control Centre (NOCO) on Covid-19, said the government would decide on Monday (tomorrow) whether or not it should ease the restrictions in the country.

Before the National Coordination Committee’s (NCC) meeting on Monday, the federal cabinet will discuss the matter on Sunday (today).

“We will present our recommendations to the prime minister on matters such as quarantining, contact tracing and mass testing [during the cabinet meeting],” Umar added.

The minister further said 100,000 coronavirus testing kits had reached Karachi. He added that 50,000 of them would be given to Sindh and 25,000 to Balochistan.

“The country will be able to conduct 20,000 to 30,000 tests in a day by the end of April.”

Umar said the government had procured and distributed 14 new Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test machines among the provinces.

He added that there were up to 27 laboratories across the country equipped to conduct the tests.

The minister also said the government could start begin testing asymptomatic people in the coming days. "We have only been testing symptomatic patients so far. We might begin testing asymptomatic people who in contact with those who have diagnosed positive for the disease.”

Earlier this week, the government launched two major initiatives to mitigate the impact of the lockdown. On Thursday, the process of doling out cash handouts to the poor begin under the Ehsaas programme, while on Friday, the SBP introduced a temporary refinance scheme to save jobs.

According to an SBP notification, the scheme, titled Refinance Scheme for Payment of Wages and Salaries to the Workers and Employees of Business Concerns, would be available to all businesses through commercial banks.

The scheme would provide financing for wages and salaries’ expense from April to June 2020 to those businesses which did not lay off their employees in these three months. “It will cover all types of employees including permanent, contractual, daily wagers as well as outsourced workers.”

The scheme has been designed especially to give preference to smaller businesses. The SBP notification said that the mark-up on loans under the scheme would be up to 5%, but active taxpayers would be able to receive loans at a reduced rate of 4%.

According to the notification, banks would not charge any loan processing fee, credit limit fee or pre-payment penalties for loans under this scheme. In addition, a grace period of six months would be allowed to the borrowers while repayment of the principal amount would be made in two years.

Under the ‘Ehsaas Cash Emergency Programme’ an immediate cash relief of Rs12,000 would be extended each to the families of daily wage earners, whose livelihood had been affected by the coronavirus-induced economic downturn.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said on Saturday that 12 million vulnerable families were being provided cash assistance under the programme and so far over 815,000 deserving families had received the cash grant.

She said that Prime Minister Imran was personally monitoring the process of the cash distribution and efforts were afoot to facilitate the people by removing hurdles. She appreciated the philanthropists for contributing in Prime Minister’s Corona Relief Programme.

“In the next phase, cash would the distributed among those registered under the Kifalat programme, whereas in the third phase cash would be disbursed among the below poverty line families, whose bread earners lost jobs due to ongoing lockdown,” she said.

The special assistant told the media person during a visit to the cash distribution centre that lists of 50,000 poor families had been provided by the district administration in all parts of the country for the cash distribution in the coming days.

(WITH INPUT FROM APP AND NEWS DESK)