Pakistan will ask international lenders for billions of dollars worth of new loans to rebuild the country after calamitous floods uprooted 33mn people and pushed its cash-strapped economy even closer to insolvency.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad was not trying to reschedule its external debt, worth about $130bn, but it did need “huge sums of money” for “mega undertakings” such as rebuilding roads, bridges and other infrastructure damaged or washed away in a deluge scientists have linked to climate change.
“We are not asking for any kind of measure [such as] a rescheduling or a moratorium,” Sharif told the Financial Times. “We are asking for additional funds.”