Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb arrived in Beijing on Thursday for talks on power sector debt relief alongside structural reforms suggested by the International Monetary Fund, two government sources said.
He held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in Beijing, they said, and is leading a delegation, along with Power Minister Awais Leghari, that will discuss several proposals, including reprofiling nearly $15 billion in energy sector debt.
The countries, which share a border, have been longtime allies, and rollovers or disbursements on loans from China have helped Pakistan meet its external financing needs in the past.
The IMF this month agreed on a $7 billion bailout for the heavily indebted South Asian economy, while raising concerns over high rates of power theft and distribution losses that result in debt accumulating across the production chain.
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The government is implementing structural reforms to reduce “circular debt” – public liabilities that build up in the power sector due to subsidies and unpaid bills – by 100 billion Pakistani rupees ($360 million) a year, Leghari has said.
On Thursday he said on X that he and the finance minister had briefed Chinese Minister of Finance Lan Fo’an on Pakistan’s “efforts to introduce tax and energy reforms in the system.”
Pakistan’s finance ministry, junior Finance Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik and the Chinese finance ministry did not respond to requests for a comment.
Both the finance and power ministers told Reuters in interviews last week that they would be discussing the power sector reforms in their Beijing visit, though they did not specify the timing.
Poor and middle-class households have been affected by a previous IMF bailout reached last year, which included raising power tariffs as part of the funding program that ended in April.
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China has set up over $20 billion worth of planned energy projects in Pakistan.
Police cruisers parked in the Stamford Police Department parking lot photographed on August 7, 2024.
Arnold Gold/Hearst Connecticut Media
STAMFORD — A member of the Stamford Board of Representatives said he was “disgusted” by the city’s Board of Finance’s decision to delay a potential increase in budgeted officers for the city’s police department.
“I’m angry,” said Sean Boeger, D-15, during the Board of Representatives’ Fiscal Committee meeting Monday.
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Boeger is also a sergeant in the Stamford Police Department. The increase, which was on the committee’s agenda, would have created 13 more officer positions in the department. A grant would help pay for six of the 13 new positions.
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It would’ve brought the total number of officers in the patrol division from 217 to 230, resulting in a 300-person force when all other ranks are considered. In the early 2000s, the department had 314 budgeted sworn officers, according to Chief of Police Timothy Shaw.
Lou DeRubeis, Stamford’s director of public safety, health and welfare, said the proposed increase was the first “in quite a number of years.”
The Board of Finance, however, during its Oct. 9 meeting, voted to hold the increase and asked the police department to provide more information, such as where the officers would be used and the total cost of hiring them outside of wages, such as health insurance and overtime.
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Boeger said during Monday’s fiscal committee meeting that he believed there were four officers assigned to traffic enforcement because “patrol demand is so high.” He said the department should be able to double the number of officers for traffic enforcement, which he said was “the top gripe of our citizenry.”
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He also said the department was “lucky if we could cover the high schools when it’s busy.”
“If we want to be responsible and we want to have the nice things that a nice city like Stamford should have…we have to do something about this,” Boeger said.
Boeger said the department had opened up testing for new positions and that the department can’t send people to police academies, whether the city’s own or others, until the new positions are approved.
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“We’re gambling with open positions based on academy availability,” Boeger said.
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Amiel Goldberg, D-13, said he wanted members of the committee to reach out to the Board of Finance to “let them know how deeply disappointed and frustrated our committee is.”
There had been an attempt to add the 13 police officer positions during the most recent budget process, but the Board of Finance cut the funding for those jobs.
At that time, members of the board said to come back with the request once the department filled out the rest of their 287 budgeted officer positions. The department will reach that goal by December, Bridget Fox, chief of staff of the mayor’s office, said during the Oct. 9 meeting.
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Shaw, in an interview before the fiscal committee meeting, said getting more people for the department would mean less people have to work overtime and because of that, less people would burn out and leave the force. Half the budgeted overtime, he said, is for the patrol division.
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During the Oct. 9 meeting, the chief said the 13-person increase could result in a $500,000 reduction in overtime costs.
Laura Burwick, a member of the Board of Finance, said during the Oct. 9 meeting the request of $743,941 for the new positions was “a huge additional expense to the budget” and that she wanted to “see a little bit of the analysis that went into this.”
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Geoff Alswanger, a member of the finance board, said during that meeting that there have been “many sessions” where the board had “angst at the management” of the city’s pension funds and that the board “can’t ignore that as part of this equation.”
Boeger, however, during Monday’s meeting, said the department “has no power or control over that.”
TPG Hotels & Resorts, one of the nation’s premier hospitality management firms, announced today that Brian Bradford has joined the company as Senior Vice President, Hospitality Finance. In this role, Bradford will have direct oversight and accountability for the accounting and finance function across the company’s portfolios and be based out of the national operations headquarters in McKinney, Texas.
Bradford joins TPG Hotels & Resorts from Remington Hospitality, where he served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Accounting, overseeing the accounting and treasury functions for a portfolio of more than 120 hotels. During his tenure, Bradford successfully restructured accounting operations, streamlined processes, and reduced the monthly close cycle by nine days. With extensive experience in financial management, reporting, and technical accounting across multiple industries, he brings to TPG a proven track record of driving operational efficiencies and implementing robust financial systems for large, complex organizations.
Bradford began his career in public accounting with CohnReznick LLP and has since held senior finance and accounting leadership positions with several large organizations including, CIG Logistics, Daseke, and Americold Realty Trust. He holds both a Master of Accounting and Bachelor of Science in Accounting from North Carolina State University.
At the 2025 Bloomberg Business Summit ASEAN in Kuala Lumpur, Novan Amirudin, Group CEO of CIMB, and Gabriel Ho, Managing Director at Macquarie Asset Management, discussed new strategies in blended finance, public-private partnerships, and which emerging asset classes are paving the way to unlock capital and boost infrastructure growth across the region. (Source: Bloomberg)
