Islamabad: A staff-level agreement between Pakistan and the IMF could not be reached, but it is expected that a short-term standby agreement will be reached with the International Monetary Fund, which is being negotiated by both parties and there is a possibility of progress.
According to Express News, there are two days left for the expiry of Pakistan’s loan program with the IMF, while the staff level agreement for the completion of the ninth economic review has not yet been reached between the two parties.
In a major development, Pakistan and the IMF have started negotiations for a new short-term program of $2.6 billion.
As a last-ditch effort by the federal government to bring the IMF loan program back on track, the federal budget for the next fiscal year is subject to conditional amendments, increase in interest rates, permission of imports and release of foreign exchange to banks to open LCs. After the order, officials of the International Monetary Fund have expressed satisfaction over the government’s actions.
Despite a statement issued by IMF mission chief Nathan Porter on Tuesday, a staff-level agreement has not been announced, while government officials remain optimistic and say that after the new terms are implemented, the IMF will agree to a $1.2 billion deal. The ninth program worth billions of dollars will be completed, but the government wants to receive the remaining amount of 2 billion and sixty million dollars from the IMF, but this money can only be received in the form of a new program.
Sources say that for this, Prime Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif has discussed the issue of signing a new standby program worth two billion and sixty million dollars for a short period of time with the Managing Director of the IMF, Christina Georgieva.
Sources say that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar wants the size of the new program from the IMF to be three and a half billion dollars, but the IMF is not agreeing to it, so now the next 24 hours are important in this context and it is expected that the IMF The F administration will inform Pakistan of its decision on the possibility of a new program.
(function(d, s, id){
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3&appId=770767426360150”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.7”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));