ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has left for Hong Kong to take part in the Asian Financial Forum (AFF) 2025 where he is expected to meet top Chinese officials, financial experts and investors, state-run media reported on Sunday.
The AFF is the region’s premier platform that brings together influential leaders from government, finance, and business communities globally for ground-breaking discussions and exchange of insights on the global economy from an Asian perspective.
AFF 2024 brought together over 140 elite speakers from around the world and attracted over 3,600 visitors from more than 50 countries and regions, including over 70 overseas and mainland China delegations.
“Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has departed for Hong Kong to represent Pakistan in the eighteenth Asian Financial Forum,” Radio Pakistan reported.
“During his visit, he will meet with heads and senior officials of major Asian financial institutions.”
The state media said Aurangzeb will meet Chinese and foreign officials, financial sector experts, professionals, investors and top businessmen during the summit.
These include the heads of China International Capital Corporation Limited, China New Energy Sky Rail Limited and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, it added.
The Pakistani finance minister will also hold interactions with foreign media, which include speaking to international publications such as Bloomberg, Nikkei Asia and other media representatives.
His visit to Hong Kong takes place as Pakistan attempts to ward off an economic crisis that has drained its resources and triggered a balance of payments headache for the country over the past two years.
Pakistan has made some economic gains since 2023 by slashing inflation down to single-digit figures from a record high of 38 percent in May 2023 and registering gains in the stock market.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Belarus signed key agreements related to energy, industrial collaboration and communications this week, state-run media reported on Sunday, amid Islamabad’s push to secure foreign investments for economic stability.
Pakistan’s Communications Minister Abdul Aleem Khan arrived in Minsk on Thursday for a two-day visit to bolster foreign trade and investment ties between the two countries.
During the visit, Khan stressed setting up trade corridors between the two countries to facilitate access to Central Asian countries through routes in Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, or Iran.
“Pakistan and Belarus have signed multiple cooperation agreements on energy, transport and communications during a high-level Pakistani delegation’s visit to the Eastern European country this week,” state broadcaster Radio Pakistan said in a report.
“The agreements cover joint projects in energy infrastructure, industrial collaboration, and postal services, with plans to formalize terms during the prime minister’s upcoming visit to Belarus,” it added.
During the signing ceremony of the agreements on Friday, Khan said both sides aimed to convert past discussions into measurable progress, particularly those related to transport networks and energy solutions.
“Belarusian Energy Minister Denis Moroz said his country is committed to ensuring greater collaboration with Pakistan across various sectors,” Radio Pakistan said.
Pakistan and Belarus have moved closer to foster stronger trade and economic cooperation in recent months. Both countries marked 30 years of diplomatic ties last year, with Belarus’ prime minister visiting Islamabad in October 2024 to meet key Pakistani civilian and military officials to bolster economic cooperation.
Islamabad has aggressively pushed for trade and investment ties with regional allies such as China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Central Asian countries and others recently in its bid to escape a prolonged macroeconomic crisis.
Pakistan has signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) worth billions of dollars with businesses and entities in China, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Azerbaijan and other countries since last year to ensure sustainable economic growth, driven by increasing exports and financial reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday promised to promote merit in the selection of athletes and institutional discipline across the country’s sports federations, state-run media said, as the world marked the International Day of Sport and Development for Peace (IDSDP).
The IDSDP is annually celebrated on Apr. 6 to recognize the power of sport in fostering positive change, bridging barriers, and transcending boundaries.
This year, the IDSDP will focus on the theme of ‘Social Inclusion,’ which aims to challenge stereotypes, promote equal opportunities and enable inclusive sport for all.
“The government is introducing reforms to ensure transparency, accountability and professionalism in national sports federations to improve institutional governance, prioritize merit in the selection of athletes and promote ethical values in the field of sports,” Sharif was quoted as saying, according to a statement from his office.
Pakistan’s sports federations have been heavily criticized for lack of improvements in infrastructure, training programs, or scouting systems for youth. Media reports have alleged that some sports federations are still heavily influenced by political connections due to which they do not select athletes on merit.
The Pakistani premier noted that sports were an effective way to further national progress, empower youth and highlight Pakistan’s identity at the international level. He said this was the reason that the government had declared sports a central pillar of its development agenda.
Sharif said Pakistan was determined to become the “center of excellence” in sports and tourism in the region by holding countrywide training camps and the 14th South Asian Games in 2026.
He appealed to all the stakeholders, including civil society and development partners to prominently include sports in policies and programs related to education, health, development and peace.
“Let us together strengthen our system of sports and create an all-encompassing, empowered and sustainable society,” Sharif concluded.
Artificial glaciers boost water supply in northern Pakistan
Water is piped from streams into villages, and sprayed into air during freezing winter temperatures
Gilgit-Baltistan has 13,000 glaciers—more than any other country on Earth outside the polar regions
Updated 06 April 2025
AFP
Hussainabad, Pakistan: At the foot of Pakistan’s impossibly high mountains whitened by frost all year round, farmers grappling with a lack of water have created their own ice towers.
Warmer winters as a result of climate change have reduced the snowfall and subsequent seasonal snowmelt that feeds the valleys of Gilgit-Baltistan, a remote region home to K2, the world’s second-highest peak.
Farmers in the Skardu valley, at an altitude of up to 2,600 meters (8,200 feet) in the shadow of the Karakoram mountain range, searched online for help in how to irrigate their apple and apricot orchards.
They watched the videos of Sonam Wangchuk, an environmental activist and engineer in the Indian region of Ladakh, less than 200 kilometers away across a heavily patrolled border, who developed the technique about 10 years ago.
Water is piped from streams into the village, and sprayed into the air during the freezing winter temperatures.
“The water must be propelled so that it freezes in the air when temperatures drop below zero, creating ice towers,” said Zakir Hussain Zakir, a professor at the University of Baltistan.
This aerial photograph taken on March 18, 2025 shows a man (R) looking at an artificial glacier built by local residents during winters to conserve water for the summers at Pari village in Kharmang district, in Pakistan's mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region. (AFP)
The ice forms in the shape of cones that resemble Buddhist stupas and act as a storage system — steadily melting throughout spring when temperatures rise.
Gilgit-Baltistan has 13,000 glaciers — more than any other country on Earth outside the polar regions.
Their beauty has made the region one of the country’s top tourist destinations — towering peaks loom over the Old Silk Road, still visible from a highway transporting tourists between cherry orchards, glaciers and ice-blue lakes.
Sher Muhammad, a specialist in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan mountain range that stretches from Afghanistan to Myanmar, however said most of the region’s water supply comes from snow melt in spring, with a fraction from annual glacial melt in summers.
“From late October until early April, we were receiving heavy snowfall. But in the past few years, it’s quite dry,” Muhammad, a researcher at the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), told AFP.
The first “ice stupas” in Gilgit-Baltistan were created in 2018.
Now, more than 20 villages make them every winter, and “more than 16,000 residents have access to water without having to build reservoirs or tanks,” said Rashid-ud-Din, provincial head of GLOF-2, a UN-Pakistan plan to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Farmer Muhammad Raza told AFP that eight stupas were built in his village of Hussainabad this winter, trapping approximately 20 million liters of water in the ice.
“We no longer have water shortages during planting,” he said, since the open-air reservoirs appeared on the slopes of the valley.
“Before, we had to wait for the glaciers to melt in June to get water, but the stupas saved our fields,” said Ali Kazim, also a farmer in the valley.
This photograph taken on March 19, 2025 shows local residents ploughing a farm at Hussainabad village in Skardu district, in Pakistan's mountainous Gilgit-Baltistan region. (AFP)
Before the stupas, “we planted our crops in May,” said 26-year-old Bashir Ahmed who grows potatoes, wheat and barley in nearby Pari village which has also adopted the method.
And “we only had one growing season, whereas now we can plant two or three times” a year.
Temperatures in Pakistan rose twice as fast between 1981 and 2005 compared to the global average, putting the country on the front line of climate change impacts, including water scarcity.
Its 240 million inhabitants live in a territory that is 80 percent arid or semi-arid and depends on rivers and streams originating in neighboring countries for more than three-quarters of its water.
Glaciers are melting rapidly in Pakistan and across the world, with a few exceptions, including the Karakoram mountain range, increasing the risk of flooding and reducing water supply over the long term.
“Faced with climate change, there are neither rich nor poor, neither urban nor rural; the whole world has become vulnerable,” said 24-year-old Yasir Parvi.
“In our village, with the ice stupas, we decided to take a chance.”
ISLAMABAD: A United States (US) interagency delegation will arrive in Islamabad on Tuesday to participate in the Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum, Pakistani state media reported on Saturday.
Pakistan’s landscape is a treasure trove of diverse mineral deposits from huge coal reserves in the southern Sindh province to gold and copper deposits in the southwestern Balochistan province. The northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is home to several gemstone mines, including emerald mines in Swat, Mardan’s pink topaz mines, and peridot mines in Kohistan.
Islamabad has designated mining and minerals as a priority sector for national economic development, aiming to reduce its reliance on imports and enhance exports. The government has launched a series of reforms and events to attract local and international investment in the sector and will be highlighting the country’s mineral wealth at the high-profile Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum 2025 on April 8-9.
The US delegation will be led by Eric Meyer, a senior official of the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, the state-run Radio Pakistan broadcaster reported.
“Mayer will meet with senior Pakistani officials to expand opportunities for American businesses in Pakistan and promote the deepening of economic ties between our two countries,” the report read. “The delegation will hold wide range of talks to advance United States interests in the critical minerals sector at the Pakistan Minerals Investment Forum.”
Last month, Pakistan Press Information Department (PID) said Copenhagen-based multinational mining company, FLSmidth, will train 100 Pakistani engineers in mining, amid Islamabad’s efforts to utilize the country’s vast mineral resources.
The statement came after Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik’s meeting with Danish Ambassador to Pakistan Jakob Linulf in Islamabad that focused on bilateral cooperation in the energy sector, particularly in mining and technological collaboration.
“FLSmidth will be launching a training program named BRIMM (Bradshaw Research Initiative for Minerals and Mining) under which hundred Pakistani engineers will be provided training,” the PID said, citing the Danish ambassador.
“FLSmidth has already entered into 5 partnership agreements in minerals sector of Pakistan.”
The South Asian country is currently making efforts to utilize these vast mineral resources through foreign investment and collaboration to stabilize its $350 billion economy.
Petroleum Minister Malik expressed Pakistan’s keen interest in leveraging Danish technology and investment to optimize resource extraction and processing, as the South Asian country has significant mineral reserves, according to the PID statement. He extended his full support and offered the government’s good offices to facilitate Danish investment and technology transfer in Pakistan’s growing mining sector.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) on Saturday dispatched another consignment of humanitarian aid to Myanmar, the Pakistani government said, as death toll from last week’s massive earthquake in Myanmar rose to 3,455.
The 7.7-magnitude quake hit a wide swath of the country, causing significant damage to six regions and states including the capital Naypyitaw. The earthquake left many areas without power, telephone or cell connections and damaged roads and bridges, making the full extent of the devastation hard to assess.
It also worsened an already dire humanitarian crisis triggered by the country’s civil war that has internally displaced more than 3 million people and left nearly 20 million in need, according to the United Nations.
Pakistan dispatched the second aid consignment through an air cargo flight from Islamabad to Yangon, Myanmar that carried 35 tons of essential relief goods, according to Pakistan’s Press Information Department (PID).
“Upon arrival, the consignment will be handed over to Ministry of Social Welfare & Resettlement of Myanmar by Pakistan’s Ambassador & Defense Attache in Myanmar,” the PID said in a statement.
“This consignment included tents, tarpaulins, blankets, water modules, medicines and packets of meal ready-to-eat.”
Myanmar military government’s leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, has said the earthquake was the second most powerful in the country’s recorded history after a magnitude 8 quake east of Mandalay in May 1912.
He said 4,840 people were injured and 214 missing, according to a report on state television MRTV. Min Aung Hlaing said 5,223 buildings, 1,824 schools, 2,752 Buddhist monasterial living quarters, 4,817 pagodas and temples, 167 hospitals and clinics, 169 bridges, 198 dams and 184 sections of the country’s main highway were damaged by the earthquake.
Earlier, Pakistan’s mission in Myanmar handed over the first consignment of 35 tons of humanitarian assistance to chief minister of Yangon region for onward distribution among those impacted by the disaster.
Islamabad said the critical supplies sent on Saturday were meant to provide immediate relief to the affected population in Myanmar.
“The Government of Pakistan and National Disaster Management Authority of Pakistan reaffirms its unwavering commitment to humanitarian relief efforts and standing in solidarity with the people of Myanmar in their time of need,” the PID added.
