Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
23-06-2023
Bureau Report
ISLAMABAD: The government of Pakistan has made yet another appeal to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to release the $1.1bn tranche, pending since November last year, as the $6.5bn loan program nears its scheduled expiry at the end of June.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met IMF’s managing director Kristalina Georgieva in Paris on Thursday and said the country has completed all the requirements asked for by the lender.
Sharif added that Pakistan was “fully committed” to fulfilling its obligations, according to a statement issued by the prime minister’s office.
Sharif, who is in France to attend the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact, expressed his hope that the funds would be released at the earliest and would “help strengthen Pakistan’s ongoing efforts towards economic stabilization, and bring relief to its people”, the statement read.
Pakistan entered a $6bn IMF program in 2019, which was later increased by another $500m last year. Pakistan received a $1.17bn tranche from the program in August 2022, as part of it its seventh and eighth reviews.
IMF sent its delegation to Pakistan for a 10-day visit earlier this year to negotiate the conditions for the ninth review but the tranche remains undelivered with the program’s expiry date set for June 30.
Pakistan is facing a dire economic situation now with multiple challenges mounting due to the balance-of-payment crisis, devaluing currency, skyrocketing inflation, and massive debt obligations due later this year.
It is left with just $4bn of foreign currency reserves with the central bank, enough to cover four weeks of import, while its currency has lost more than 50 percent of its value against the US dollar during the last year.
According to government data, inflation has reached almost 38 percent and the IMF, in its global economic outlook report, released in April, forecasted the South Asian country’s economy will grow just 0.5 percent this year, down from six percent in 2022.
