Web Desk — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Pakistan move closer to the revival of their loan package on Saturday as Islamabad has taken several steps in compliance with the IMF demands to reduce its expenditure, increase energy prices and improve tax collection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The moves bring Pakistan closer to meeting an IMF demand that the country achieves a primary budget surplus of 153 billion rupees \u2014 0.2 percent of the national output for the new financial year \u2014 to revive the bailout package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the last round of talks, IMF Resident Repres\u00adentative in Islamabad Esther Perez Ruiz said, \u201cDiscussions between the IMF staff and the authorities on policies to strengthen macroeconomic stability in the coming year continue, and important progress has been made over the FY23 budget\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, Pakistan has taken other key steps to IMF demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Michael Kugelman, a scholar of South Asian affairs at the Wilson Centre, Washington, thinks that the Fund wants more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy sense is that the IMF wants to get a better sense of Islamabad\u2019s commitment to meeting IMF criteria before agreeing to release more funds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the new government started off \u201cslowly and indecisively,\u201d refusing to remove the energy subsidy that the IMF wanted to remove and this indecisiveness proved costly in the previous round of talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo its credit, the (Shehbaz) Sharif government is now doing all the right things, through the release of its austerity budget and other revenue-generating moves. So, the IMF funds should start coming in,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bloomberg financial wire also agrees with this assessment, saying that \u201cPakistan is probably closer to an IMF loan\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Web Desk — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Pakistan move closer to the revival of their loan package on Saturday as Islamabad has taken several steps in compliance with the IMF demands to reduce its expenditure, increase energy prices and improve tax collection. The moves bring Pakistan closer to meeting an IMF demand that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-business"],"yoast_head":"\n