Minister for Finance and Revenue Miftah Ismail on Thursday said that the government remains committed to reviving the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, a statement that comes after talks on the 7th review under the $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) remained inconclusive.
The Fund pointed out ‘deviations’ on fiscal sides from the policies agreed in the last review. Resultantly, no staff-level agreement was reached on Wednesday while the revival of $6 billion EFF was delayed.
The Fund emphasised the urgency of concrete policy actions, including removing fuel and energy subsidies and the fiscal year 2023 budget, to achieve programme objectives. The IMF statement also indicated that the government would be taking prior actions in the federal budget for fiscal year 2022-23. The revival of stalled programme can be expected by end of July/August 2022.
Taking to Twitter, the finance minister, who returned from Doha after leading Pakistan’s side of the talks, said that the government delegation had very useful and constructive discussions with the IMF team over the last week.
“We discussed significant slippages in FY22, caused in part by the fuel subsidies given in February 2022,” said Ismail.