WB president to visit Pak to finalise support for institutional reforms

World Bank president David Malpass will visit Islamabad in the first week of November to finalise enhanced financial support for institutional reforms and growth agenda in Pakistan. The visit follows Prime Minister Imran Khan's meeting with the WB president during his recent visit to the US.

Patchamuthu Illangovan, World Bank's country director in Pakistan, and his team called on Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, adviser to the prime minister on finance, to apprise him of the upcoming visit of Malpass to Islamabad, the Dawn reported on Friday. Illangovan is understood to have highlighted the problems being faced by the existing projects and slowdown in the project planning and process, even though a few financing agreements worth USD 950 million were signed with the World Bank last month, it said.

Another project of about USD 1.5 billion is now coming up for approval by the World Bank board, but some of the projects faced significant challenges, the report said. In June, the World Bank had approved USD 722 million loan for Pakistan that will largely be used for improving civic and public transport facilities in Karachi. Out of the approved amount, USD 652 million will be used for the development of Karachi, while the rest USD 70 million will be used for improving tourism services in the country's northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa region.