ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar has asserted that the threat of Pakistan being blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) had been averted, and “we would come out of Grey list in coming June.”
“We had made significant progress on the historically toughest action plan in a very challenging time amid COVID-19 pandemic,” he said, while addressing a press conference in Islamabad today (Friday).
Hammad Azhar informed that initially when the action plan was given in 2018, the country’s focus was on avoiding blacklisting. “The plan given to Pakistan was world’s toughest action plan, but Pakistan successfully did it as was admitted by FATF,” he added.
He pointed out that the FATF countries and the FATF secretariat, in the last meeting, said that blacklisting was not an option for Pakistan because it had made significant progress.
The minister further said that Pakistan had target to complete the 27-point action plan, on which significant progress has been made, adding that even FATF also admitted that around 90 percent progress was achieved by Pakistan.
He further said that Pakistan had an option not to report during COVID-19 pandemic as was opted by some countries, however, it continued the exercise and got a positive outcome.
“Pakistan was perhaps the only country in the world that was under the FATF’s dual scrutiny as the Mutual Evaluation Report (MER) process was also going on simultaneously,” he added.
It is pertinent to mention here that FATF in its virtual plenary meeting held from February 22 to February 25 had appreciated Pakistan for the significant progress made on the entire action plan, admitting that the country had made progress across all action plan items and has now largely addressed 24 out of the 27 action items.
