Pakistan will "revisit" its budget after catastrophic floods left more than 4 million people homeless and cut back the country's growth target, Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi as saying today. Qureshi was speaking at a conference to publicize Pakistan's plight as the United Nations prepared to hold a meeting later in the day to press for more contributions to its $460 million emergency appeal for flood relief in the Asian country. The minister said Pakistan would use all its resources to tackle the impact of the flooding. "We will re-prioritize our budgetary allocations. We will revisit our budget, because we have to focus on these people, we have to rehabilitate them, we have to reconstruct the flood-affected areas, infrastructure," he said. "But frankly it is beyond just national resources. We do need international assistance. We need international assistance now," he added. Qureshi gave no figures or other details, but later told reporters the Finance Ministry was "looking at it" and officials would need to talk to the International Monetary Fund, to which Pakistan turned in 2008 for emergency financing to avert a balance of payments crisis and shore up reserves. The IMF and Pakistani authorities are due to meet on Aug. 23 to review Pakistan's performance and the release of a sixth tranche of the finance package. He said the government expected to "cut down on current expenditure" and divert some of its development budget to flood-affected areas. Development spending had been budgeted at 663 billion rupees ($7.74 billion) before the floods struck late last month. Pakistani officials have said the country will miss its 4.5 percent gross domestic product growth target this year because of the flooding. At the U.N. General Assembly meeting later on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to announce a big increase in U.S. aid for Pakistan. Some other countries are also expected to promise more funds. U.S. officials said earlier this week they expected Clinton to announce a further $100 million, but U.S. Senator John Kerry said on Thursday $200 million from an existing $7.5 billion aid package for Pakistan over five years would be diverted to the relief effort. Western countries have been among the main donors so far. U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told reporters at the New York meeting that Pakistan's neighbor China "should step up to the plate." Qureshi defended China, saying it had both given cash and provided food and shelter for some 27,000 people in northern Pakistan. "If you put it all together, it's substantial," he said.
