Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said he had expressed his government\u2019s resolve to complete the terms of the International Monetary Fund\u2019s (IMF) programme, in a conversation with the lender\u2019s managing director yesterday.<\/p>\n
The telephone conversation comes as Pakistan\u2019s economy is increasingly febrile, with foreign exchange reserves amounting to fewer than three weeks of imports.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a phone call with Managing Director [Kristalina Georgieva] of the IMF yesterday, I told her about the government\u2019s resolve to complete the terms of IMF\u2019s program,\u201d PM Shehbaz said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also explained Pakistan\u2019s economic difficulties especially after the devastating floods. IMF delegation will come to Pakistan soon.\u201d
\nThe premier\u2019s statement comes a day after he said an IMF delegation would come to Pakistan in \u201ctwo to three days\u201d to finalise the ninth review of Pakistan\u2019s $7bn Extended Fund Facility (EFF).<\/p>\n
Pakistan entered a $6 billion IMF programme in 2019, which was increased to $7bn last year. The programme\u2019s ninth review, which would release $1.18bn, is currently pending. It had earlier been put off for two months due to the PML-N-led government\u2019s unwillingness to accept certain conditions placed before it by the Fund, and the disagreements have yet to be resolved.<\/p>\n
Cash crunch
\nThe country is currently in the midst of a severe cash crunch, with foreign exchange reserves in the State Bank of Pakistan\u2019s (SBP) depleting to an eight-year low of $5.576 billion during the week ended on Dec 30, 2022.<\/p>\n
This decline left no space for the government to pay back its foreign debts without borrowing more from friendly countries.<\/p>\n
Despite fast dwindling SBP reserves, Finance Minis\u00adter Ishaq Dar is still hopeful about reverting the situation with expected financial help promised by the friendly countries, but nothing has been realised so far.<\/p>\n
During the week the SBP foreign exchange reserves saw an outflow of $245 million for external debt repayments.<\/p>\n
Foreign debt servicing is the most troubling question for the PMLN-led coalition government facing a serious threat of default. Several attempts to restart talks with the IMF for the release of the next tranche have so far remained unfruitful.<\/p>\n
The falling reserves have already deeply devalued the local currency against the US dollar and other major currencies. The SBP\u2019s foreign exchange reserves dipped $11bn to $5.6bn from $16.6bn in Jan\u00aduary 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said he had expressed his government\u2019s resolve to complete the terms of the International Monetary Fund\u2019s (IMF) programme, in a conversation with the lender\u2019s managing director yesterday. The telephone conversation comes as Pakistan\u2019s economy is increasingly febrile, with foreign exchange reserves amounting to fewer than three weeks of imports. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111545,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111543\/revisions\/111545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/111544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}