Pakistan on track to fulfilling FATF conditions.

KARACHI -- The government is on track to fulfilling all necessary conditions of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), State Bank of Pakistan Governor Dr Reza Baqir said on Saturday. He was speaking at the Financial Crime Summit, a conference organised in Karachi to discuss the way forward for Pakistan post FATF. The governor sounded cautiously optimistic, saying foreign investors' confidence has been restored following government reforms. 'Both the FATF and the IMF have been happy with the reforms Pakistan is implementing.' Dr Baqir noted that the country's foreign exchange reserves have improved and that the people are moving towards savings. He said the exchange rate is showing signs of recovery due to the corrective measures taken by the government. 'As soon as economic conditions improve, the restrictions will ease,' he added. The speakers and panellists on the occasion discussed some of the challenges pertaining to financial crime. They believed that most of those challenges come from implementing the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations and creating a cultural change in organizations to actually abide by the restrictions imposed.

On a slightly less positive note, Khalida Habib, the executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SECP), said the FATF situation was 'quite grave', and that the sensitisation of the banking...