مضمون کا ماخذ : لوٹومینیا اکومولڈا
IMF program is on track, says Miftah
Federal Minister for Finance Miftah Ismail Monday said the IMF program was on track and the tweets and stories claiming its postponement were not true. “I have been reading with some amusement all the tweets and stories about the IMF program being postponed or delayed due to some anti-corruption law. There is no truth to […]
Federal Minister for Finance Miftah Ismail Monday said the IMF program was on track and the tweets and stories claiming its postponement were not true.
“I have been reading with some amusement all the tweets and stories about the IMF program being postponed or delayed due to some anti-corruption law. There is no truth to it. The IMF program is on
track,” he tweeted.
It is pertinent to mention that Pakistan received Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) in the last week of June from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for combined 7th and 8th reviews under Extended Fund Facility (EFF).
In May 2019, Pakistan and the IMF reached a staff-level agreement on economic policies for a three-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF).
Under the agreement, Pakistan was to receive about $6 billion for a period of 39 months, and so far it has received almost
half of it.
The IMF approved a three-year $6bn loan in June 2019 “to support Pakistan’s economic plan, aimed at returning “sustainable growth to the country’s economy and improving the standards of living”.
Under the MEFP, prior actions include the passage of the federal budget as agreed to with the IMF and presented in the National Assembly on June 24 and present a memorandum of understanding (MoU) duly signed by the provincial governments to jointly provide about Rs750bn cash surplus to the Centre.
The MEFP is based on budgetary measures announced by Ismail in his winding-up speech on the revised budget in the National Assembly last week, envisaging over Rs1.716 trillion (2.2pc of GDP) of fiscal adjustment, mostly through taxation, including 10pc super tax on 13 industries and personal income tax covering monthly incomes above Rs50,000 per month.
This is the biggest fiscal adjustment in a single year that would help turn about Rs1.6tr primary deficit – the difference between revenues and expenditures excluding interest payments – during the current fiscal year into a Rs152bn surplus next year.
