March 29, 2024
Business National

FATF appreciates Pakistan for addressing 21 points out of 27

Extensive work has already been done on the remaining six items and Pakistan should continue to make efforts to fulfill the remaining requirements in line with its strategy by February 2021, said a statement by FATF.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has acknowledged that Pakistan has made progress over almost all the required items by addressing 21 points out of 27.

According to a press release issued here on Friday (October 23) by the Finance Ministry, the FATF acknowledged the noteworthy progress made by Pakistan on a number of required items.

Appreciating Pakistan’s persistent and irrevocable efforts in the implementation of FATF Action Plan, the FATF has upgraded a total of 9 action plan items in its October 2020 Plenary.

According to a statement, prior to this plenary, Pakistan had addressed 14 out of 27 items and now FATF had reviewed the compliance of remaining 13 action plan items during the current plenary.

The action plan items that have been addressed by Pakistan include highly important areas of financial sector, illegal hawala/hundi, cross-border currency regime, international cooperation in terrorist financing cases, amendments to the anti-terrorism act, implementation of targeted financial sanctions by financial institutions, applying sanctions for AML/CFT violations, and controlling facilities and services owned or controlled by designated persons and entities.

This points out the confidence of FATF on the efforts of Pakistani government, the statement added.

However, in view of the 6 items in “Partially Addressed” category, the plenary meeting decided to maintain status quo with respect to classification of Pakistan, for the time being.

Extensive work has already been done on these six items and Pakistan should continue to make efforts to fulfill the remaining requirements in line with its strategy by February 2021, it said adding that FATF would undertake the next review of Pakistan’s progress in February 2021.

The plenary meetings of FATF were held virtually from October 18, 2020 to October 23, 2020, where its members talked on several topics including Pakistan’s progress.

The Pakistan team, led by Federal Minister of Industries and Production Muhammad Hammad Azhar, attended these virtual meetings.

Pakistan presented its case in a good way and also reiterated its political will to go with the efforts to complete the Action Plan.