Pakistan takes over G-24 chair from Nigeria: Aurangzeb to push debt relief and IMF, World Bank reform

Pakistan has assumed the chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four (G-24), the caucus of developing countries on monetary and development issues, taking over from Nigeria, the Finance Division said in a statement on Sunday, Business Recorder reported. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb will lead the group.

What the G-24 is

The G-24 brings together developing countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to coordinate their positions at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Its ministers meet around the IMF and World Bank meetings each spring and autumn, so the chair speaks for the group at the place where lending rules, quotas and voting shares are set.

Pakistan's agenda as chair

The Finance Division set out three headline priorities:

1. Development at the centre of global economic policymaking.
2. More voice for developing economies in multilateral institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
3. Reform of the international financial architecture.

Under those, Aurangzeb listed affordable and timely development finance, sustainable debt solutions, stronger global financial safety nets, climate resilience and mobilising more public and private capital.

"The future of developing economies is not peripheral to the future of the global economy. It is central to it," he said.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the chairmanship a significant diplomatic milestone.

Why it matters at home

Pakistan is itself one of the IMF's largest borrowers, so the subjects on the G-24 agenda, debt terms, the cost of borrowing and climate finance, are the ones that shape the budget here. A louder developing-country voice on debt does not change Pakistan's own programme overnight, but chairing the group puts its finance minister in the room when the rules for countries like Pakistan are discussed.

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