US should worry about its debts to China: PTI leader

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf (PTI) leader Asad Umar has said that the US should pay heed towards paying off their own loans to China instead of worrying about Pakistan.

Umar, set to be Pakistan’s next finance minister under Imran Khan’s premiership, told the media on Saturday that he categorically rejected US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s statement pertaining to capital from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) being used to pay off Pakistan’s debt to China. He said that the PTI government will bring all China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) agreements to the fore to show no such issue will take place.

“One friendly advice to the Americans, we’ll worry about our Chinese debt, but I think they better handle their own Chinese debt first,” Dawn quoted him as saying.

Umar said Pakistan was facing a conundrum in the guise of foreign loans and the country needed to decide from where to “conjure up” $10-12 billion dollars within the next six weeks. “Either the nation can go to the IMF or friendly countries or sell bonds to overseas Pakistanis and raise the amount,” he added.

Pakistan is expected to seek a bailout of about $12 billion from the IMF or China to avert a currency crisis. China has pledged $57 billion in loans for the CPEC, deepening economic ties at a time when relations between Pakistan and the US are fraying over Islamabad’s action against terrorists.

Pompeo has said that the US will be “watching” what the IMF does. “There’s no rationale for IMF tax dollars, and associated with that American dollars that are part of the IMF funding, for those to go to bail out Chinese bondholders or China itself,” Pompeo had said.

Pakistan has said concerns that any new IMF bailout for the country could be used to repay Chinese debt is “totally wrong”.