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India is making all-out efforts to isolate Pakistan at the international stage, besides ensuring drying of development-related funding and bailout packages by multilateral agencies and nations.
Sources told ANI that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked Asian Development Bank (ADB) President Masato Kanda in the Italian city of Milan on Monday to suspend all kind of funds to Pakistan. As of 2024, the Asian Development Bank's sovereign portfolio in Pakistan comprises 53 loans and 3 grants totalling USD 9.13 billion. India is also reportedly expected to raise concerns at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about Pakistan's bailout package. The IMF board is scheduled to review the arrangement in its meeting on May 9, its website showed. India has sharply downgraded diplomatic ties with Pakistan after the April 22 terrorist attack on tourists in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam, leading to the death of 26 individual and several other injured, mostly tourists. Sources also told ANI that in another effort to economically deprive and weaken Pakistan from sources of funding, India will approach global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog FATF (Financial Action Task Force) to include Pakistan in the grey list. Adding Pakistan to the FATF grey list would make them difficult to attract bailout funding and for their developmental projects. Separately, at a meeting with Italian Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti on Monday India's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has demanded that the Italian government should cut all kind of financing to Pakistan, as New Delhi continues to extend its punitive moves against Islamabad. Reportedly, India is also working with European nations to ensure stricter oversight of international funding to Pakistan. Going ahead, India will most likely reach out to other nations, formally demanding cutting of financing to Pakistan. On Monday, Moody's in a report cautioned that a persistent increase in tensions between India and Pakistan is expected to impair Pakistan's access to external financing and pressure its foreign-exchange reserves. Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves remain well below what is required to meet its external debt payment needs for the next few years, the global rating agency noted in the report. In the same report, Moody's has painted a positive picture for India. The report said in India, the macroeconomic conditions are stable, bolstered by moderating but still high levels of growth and strong public investment and healthy private consumption. Sustained escalation in tensions with India would likely weigh on Pakistan's growth and hamper the government's ongoing fiscal consolidation, setting back Pakistan's progress in achieving macroeconomic stability, Moody's added. Post the Pahalgam terror attack, India has suspended the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given full autonomy to the Indian armed forces to decide the nature, timing, and targets of India's response against the terror harbouring nation. (ANI)
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