Islamabad: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said “All technical-level discussions with International Monetary Fund (IMF)” are over. However, he refrained from giving timeline on when deal will be inked.

During Question/Answer session at Senate, Dar said once again that IMF wants commitments made by friendly countries to materialise. He reiterated that country would not default on its payment obligations. “There is no question of default, Pakistan will manage its responsibilities and will make every payment on time. “IMF or no IMF, we need to jointly run country and there should be no politics on economy,” he added.

His comments come day after Minister of State for Finance Dr Aisha Ghaus-Pasha said that staff-level agreement on 9th review was taking time because IMF wants to independently verify commitments from friendly countries i.e. Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

Pakistan is reeling from one of its worst economic crises in history. South Asian country has been faced with barrage of woes with perceived default risk and downgrade by international ratings agencies reflecting state of economy that has also had to bear major political turmoil and frequent change in key leadership.

IMF funding is critical for Pakistan to unlock other external financing avenues and two have been negotiating since early February to resume $ 1.1 billion in funding held since November, part of bailout agreed upon in 2019.

Earlier, Minister for Commerce Syed Naveed Qamar while answering query pertaining to export sector, said ‘“Unfortunately present conditions are not healthy.”

“As we are moving into IMF programme, one of their conditionality was that government should not give any subsidy to its industry including export sector,” he said.

Published in The Daily National Courier, March, 31 2023

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