The announcement came after the ADB’s country director, Yong Ye, met Pakistan’s finance minister Ishaq Dar in Islamabad.

“ADB will provide flood relief support to Pakistan to the tune of US$2.3 to US$2.5 billion,” the ministry said in a statement.

The money includes US$1.5 billion for one of its aid programmes, known as Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Expenditure (BRACE), which will be placed before the ADB board for approval during October, it said.

The floods, caused by abnormal monsoon rains and glacial melt, have submerged huge swaths of the South Asian country and killed nearly 1,700 people, the majority of them children and women.

The United Nations on Tuesday revised fivefold its humanitarian appeal for Pakistan, to US$816 million from US$160 million, as a surge of waterborne diseases and growth of hunger posed new dangers, which the World Health Organization has termed a “second disaster”.