Saudi Arabia plans to provide Pakistan with financial support, Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed al-Jadaan said, as the kingdom looks to help shore up alliances with countries struggling with the effects of rising inflation.
The Saudi Arabian government is to “continue to support Pakistan as much as we can,” al-Jadaan said at a news conference in Riyadh.
The kingdom has taken several steps to provide financial support to countries in the region as it looks to bolster allies and cement new relationships.
Photo: AFP
Earlier this month, it extended the term of a US$3 billion deposit to boost foreign currency reserves and help Pakistan overcome economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saudi Arabia is also looking to make more investments in Egypt and is planning to initiate deals in Turkey, al-Jadaan said.
“Our relationship with Turkey is improving greatly, and we hope to have investment opportunities,” he said. “We have started investing aggressively in Egypt and we will continue to look at investment opportunities and that is more important than deposits. Deposits can be pulled, but investments stay.”
Saudi Arabia is in the final stages of agreeing to deposit US$5 billion at Turkey’s central bank, the finance ministry said last month, a major boost for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s bid to keep the country’s currency stable ahead of presidential elections next year.
The agreement would crown a recent rapprochement that ended years of hostility between the Turkish and Saudi Arabian governments.
It also extended the maturity of a US$5 billion deposit with Egypt’s central bank last month, and the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund is also looking into US$10 billion of potential investments in Egypt’s healthcare, education, agriculture and financial sectors, the Egyptian Cabinet said in a statement.
The momentum of talks between the countries’ central banks comes after a joint effort by Saudia Arabia and Turkey to mend ties that were ruptured after the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 at the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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