“Pakistan to come out of Grey list in June,” says Hammad Azhar

Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar said that Pakistan has complied with 90 percent of Financial Action Task Force’s action plan and rest will be completed by June this year.

According to the details, the minister was addressing a news conference in Islamabad on Friday.

Hammad Azhar said that Pakistan achieved its targets even though the timelines and the FATF’s action plan were a challenge.

He said that Pakistan has so for completed compliance of 24 out of 27 action points of the FATF. He said Pakistan will come out of the grey list after compliance of the remaining three points.

He said Pakistan was given the most challenging action plan of the world, but it vigorously pursued to comply with the plan which was also recognized by the international community in FAFTs plenaries.

Hammad Azhar said India misused FATF platform to push Pakistan into the black list, but due to government’s concerted efforts of implementing the action plan, this has not been an option for Pakistan now.

He said Pakistan continued complying with the FATF action plan even during strong wave of Covid-19 pandemic. Hammad Azhar added that the credit for the entire effort was due to a whole of government approach under which different departments worked.

It is worth mentioning here that FATF President Dr Marcus Pleyer on Thursday while appreciating that the country had made significant progress on all aspects of AML/CFT action plan, said that Islamabad will continue to stay on the FATF’s grey list for another four months.