TAHIR AMIN

ISLAMABAD: The government is finalising an approximately $600 million emergency package with multilaterals for dealing with the coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak across the country.

This was stated by Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar here on Thursday.

The minister tweeted, “Economic Affairs Division (EAD) is finalising an approx $600 million emergency package with multilaterals for dealing with Covid-19 outbreak across the country. It includes reallocations and fresh financing. This will be in addition to local funding that is being made available”, he added.

The minister said that emergency funds from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) supported NDRMF (approx Rs7.5 billion) were also being made available for the NDMA.

This is in addition to funds already made available by the Finance Division for immediate use by the authority. Reallocations from foreign-funded projects are also being diverted towards it.

“I would like to thank the People’s Republic of China for providing grant assistance of USD4 million along with 300,000 medical face masks, 10 ventilators and other equipment. They have also undertaken to arrange for much greater number of ventilators,” Azhar added.

The government has decided reallocation of non-utilised funds and to seek fresh funds from multilateral agencies to deploy towards coronavirus (Corvid-19) prevention across the country, the minister earlier added.

“We aim to make these funds available to relevant departments by next week.”

He further said that the Finance Division was also working in close coordination with the advisor on health for provision of local funds.

The provinces have also been asked to keep close coordination with their respective health departments for provision of resources.