ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has contacted IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and requested her to play a role in ending the deadlock in IMF program maintenance.
The negotiations of the Ministry of Finance with the IMF for the last 4 months have not yet been fruitful, after which the Prime Minister himself has intervened in the matter as a last resort so that 6.
A $5 billion bailout package and foreign funding could be restored. In the past, the Prime Minister had called Kristalina Georgieva to appeal for her intervention to start review talks, after which talks began in February this year.
Official sources told The Express Tribune that the Prime Minister considers the IMF as the last resort to avoid default, that’s why he decided to contact him himself.
Finance has been directed to share the details of the upcoming budget with the IMF. The finance ministry was earlier reluctant to disclose these details to the IMF.
According to the sources, the prime minister informed the IMF chief that Pakistan has fulfilled all the conditions agreed in February, so now the staff level agreement should be announced.
The IMF MD demanded details of the new budget, after which the two The leaders agreed that Pakistan would provide the budget details to the IMF.
Earlier, the finance ministry had refused to give these details to the IMF on the grounds that the ninth review is for the period of July to September 2022 and in such a case the demand for details of the upcoming budget is unjustified.
A top government official said that a staff-level agreement is possible if the budget details are in line with the monetary framework set by the IMF.
According to initial reports, the proposed budget is extensive and needs to be cut to meet the IMF’s demand. According to the sources, the prime minister has established seven committees to make the proposed budget according to political priorities, in which the committee headed by Khawaja Asif will give suggestions regarding salary, pension increase and subsidies.
The IMF had asked Pakistan to manage the loans of 6 billion dollars by June, but Pakistan Saudi Arabia And has received assurances of 3 billion dollars from the United Arab Emirates.
Differences with the IMF also persist over the issue of the current account deficit, and the International Monetary Fund has not accepted the revised estimate of the government’s deficit of four to four and a half billion dollars.
