By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The Asian Development Bank plans to extend about $10 billion in financing to Pakistan over the next five years under a new country partnership strategy that puts private-sector development at the center of efforts to secure sustainable and inclusive growth.
The Manila-based lender launched the 2026-2030 Country Partnership Strategy on Wednesday, describing it as a tailored roadmap to help Pakistan move beyond repeated boom-and-bust cycles by emphasizing export- and investment-led expansion. The plan builds on the country’s recent macroeconomic stabilization and a series of structural reforms, while targeting persistent weaknesses in infrastructure, business conditions and public finances.
“The new CPS is tailored to address Pakistan’s structural challenges and promote robust and lasting growth, which benefits the whole country, especially the poor and vulnerable,” Emma Fan, the ADB’s country director for Pakistan, said in a statement accompanying the launch. “It promotes strategic investments and reforms across key sectors to stimulate economic growth and create jobs. ADB looks forward to supporting Pakistan’s public and private sectors in delivering on this ambitious agenda.”
The five-year blueprint rests on three core pathways: enabling private-sector development, advancing inclusion and empowerment, and enhancing resilience and sustainability. These will be reinforced by cross-cutting priorities including good governance and institutional strengthening, gender equality and social inclusion, digital transformation, and regional cooperation and integration.
Private-sector development forms the strategy’s centerpiece. The ADB intends to back reforms and investments that cut regulatory burdens, upgrade infrastructure, widen access to finance, expand public-private partnerships, and scale up its own non-sovereign operations. It has identified high-impact areas including critical minerals, railways and multimodal connectivity, energy security and clean power, agricultural productivity and value chains, integrated water-resource management, and skills development and employment.
To tackle emerging challenges more effectively, the lender said it will shift toward integrated packages that combine policy advice, sovereign and non-sovereign loans, technical assistance, and knowledge products. The approach aligns with Pakistan’s National Economic Transformation Plan for 2024-2029 and the ADB’s own Strategy 2030 midterm review, while deepening coordination with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other partners.
On inclusion, the CPS prioritizes investments in human capital, quality social services and women’s economic participation. Resilience measures focus on disaster-risk management, climate adaptation and mitigation, flood and water-resource planning, food security, and air-quality improvements — critical given Pakistan’s exposure to extreme weather.
Pakistan, the world’s fifth-most populous nation with an estimated 240.5 million people in 2025 and roughly two-thirds under age 30, holds significant latent potential, the ADB noted. Its young workforce, rich natural-resource base — including critical minerals — growing digital ecosystem and strategic location all point to upside if structural constraints are addressed.
The strategy highlights several advantages: 47 percent of the country’s land is arable, far above the global average of 10.7 percent and Asia’s 12.7 percent. Information technology has become Pakistan’s fastest-growing export, and digital transformation could further lift productivity. Yet the document also lays out the obstacles: narrow production and export bases, a cumbersome business environment, imbalanced public finances, inefficient energy infrastructure, underinvestment in rail, gaps in urban services, weak governance, high poverty and acute climate vulnerability.
Pakistan’s economy has already shown signs of stabilization. Gross domestic product expanded 3.1 percent in fiscal 2025 after contracting 0.2 percent in fiscal 2023. Average inflation fell sharply to 4.5 percent in fiscal 2025 from 23.4 percent a year earlier, slipping below the State Bank of Pakistan’s 5-7 percent target. The current-account balance swung to a 0.5 percent of GDP surplus — the first since fiscal 2011 — from a 4.7 percent deficit in fiscal 2022.
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