The government of Pakistan has made yet another appeal to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to release the $1.1 billion tranche, pending since November last year, as the $6.5 billion loan program nears its scheduled expiration at the end of June.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met the 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 stabilisation, and bring relief to its people”, the statement read.
Pakistan entered a $6 billion IMF program in 2019, which was later increased by another $500 million last year. Pakistan received a $1.17 billion tranche from the program in August 2022, as part of its seventh and eighth reviews.
The 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 expiration 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 $4 billion of foreign currency reserves with the central bank, enough to cover four weeks of imports, 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, forecast that the South Asian country’s economy will grow just 0.5 percent this year, down from six percent in 2022.
Pakistan also presented its budget earlier in June with a $50 billion outlay, calling it a “responsible” budget, but the lender, in its statement, questioned some of the policies and called it a “missed opportunity”.
Pakistan’s central bank’s data shows that the country is expected to pay more than $4 billion by the end of this year alone, while a total of $77 billion is due by 2026, according to a recent report by the United States Institute of Peace.
The country has also been caught in political turmoil in an election year, which is scheduled to take place by October, with parliament completing its tenure by August.
Source: Al-Jazeera
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