Pakistan must focus on fiscal discipline, export growth and private investment: FinMin Aurangzeb

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said Pakistan was on path of going from economic stability to sustainable development and stressed the need for fiscal discipline, boosting exports and promoting private investment for longterm economic improvement.

Addressing a virtual event of the Pakistan Banks Association, the finance minister said the country needed financial innovation that could cut the cost of doing business and bring more people into the formal economy.

He argued that electronic assets should be integrated into the financial system based on their real economic benefits and their ability to facilitate company activity.

Aurangzeb said Pakistan’s move from economic stability to sustainable development needed fiscal discipline, export expansion and more private sector investment. Digital innovation should assist to offer financial services to more people and make corporate operations more efficient, he said.

The finance minister noted the use of deposit tokens by institutional customers on blockchain networks as a real-world example of digital financial innovation.

“The BIS’s Project Agorá was looking at tokenised bank deposits, and the central bank was looking at possibilities for cross-border payments through deposits,” he stated.

Muhammad Aurangzeb said banks play a key part in safeguarding cash and addressing hazards related with digital technologies. He said banks were also crucial in ensuring that services are effectively delivered to consumers.

He underlined that the legal framework should distinguish between different forms of electronic assets and the economic activity related to them.

Under the Virtual Assets Act 2026, a legislative framework had been formed in Pakistan and the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) was responsible for licensing and overseeing virtual asset service providers, stated the finance minister.

He claimed Pakistan had moved toward developing a legal and monitored structure for virtual assets.

Aurangzeb emphasised the vital role of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) in setting the regulatory framework for digital asset standards.

Risks of unbacked crypto assets were different, he said, and authorities needed to differentiate between different classes of electronic assets and their underlying economic activity.

The finance minister stated that Pakistan received $41.6 billion remittances during the last fiscal year and the figure was likely to cross $44 billion in the current fiscal year.