ISLAMABAD, APR 16 (DNA) – Prime Minister Imran Khan Friday reshuffled his cabinet changing the portfolios of his government’s key ministers and appointing Shaukat Fayaz Tareen as a new Minister for Finance and Revenue 

The prime minister appointed Chaudhry Fawad Hussain as Minister for Information and Broadcasting, replacing Senator Shibli Faraz who interchanged his portfolio with Fawad as Science and Technology Minister.

Hammad Azhar, previously the industries productions minister, will now be holding the position of Minister for Energy. He has replaced Omar Ayub Khan who has now been appointed as economic affairs minister. In place of Hammad Azhar, the prime minister appointed Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar as Federal Minister for Industries and Production.

Shaukat Tareen was already a member of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council. He has served as adviser to the PM on finance during the PPP’s tenure and as finance minister during Musharraf’s era. He is a banker by profession and worked as the president of HBL in 1997. In 2000, he built Union Bank, which was later sold to Standard Chartered Bank.

Tareen became a senator and the federal finance minister in president Asif Ali Zardari’s government. As the finance minister under the PPP government, Tareen signed the bailout program with the IMF under that government and concluded the seventh NFC Award.

 However, he left the ministry without completing his tenure to start his own bank, Silk Bank, where he served as its president and CEO. The changes come at a time when Pakistan has just received another $500 million from the International Monetary Fund as part of the $6 billion bailout package it signed in July 2019.

The third and latest tranche of the program brings the total borrowing for budget support to $2 billion. Islamabad had signed the 39-month bailout program with the IMF to avert sovereign default because of a balance-of-payment crisis. The program will cost Pakistan $180 million in interest payments at less than 3% to be paid in 10 years. = DNA

=======================