Three primary IMF targets achieved

Pakistan has successfully achieved three primary IMF targets, including limit of budgetary borrowing from the State Bank, net foreign assets (NFA), and net domestic assets (NDA), set for the quarter ending on March 31, sources said on Wednesday.
The federal government by retiring budgetary borrowing achieved International Monetary Funds (IMF) one of the primary conditions to cap its budgetary borrowing from the central bank at Rs 1,274 billion on March 31, 2009, they said, adding that "the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has also comfortably met IMF two major targets of NFA and NDA by the end of March".
The Fund had given several quarterly targets for constant payment of loan tranches. The first tranche of 3.1 billion dollars of the standby loan was received in November 2008, while the Fund board of directors on March 30 also approved payment of second tranche of 847 million dollars after reviewing the overall economic situation.
Achievement of the target for December 2008 helped to get the second tranche on time, and it was expected that 847 million dollars would be transferred to Pakistan by Thursday, sources said.
The federal government achieved the target of net budgetary borrowing by retiring over Rs 100 billion during last month. The IMF had given a target to reduce the government budgetary borrowing stocks at a level of Rs 1,274 billion by the end of March 2009. However, the federal government reduced its borrowing stocks to a satisfactory level before time, sources said.
"Net stocks of government budgetary borrowing from SBP decreased to Rs 1,270 billion on March 29, which was less than the target of Rs 1,274 billion for the third quarter of current fiscal year 2008-09", they said.
The SBP also achieved its targets of NFA and NDA set by IMF targets for the quarter ending on March 31. "We have achieved IMFs NFA and NDA targets comfortably" confirmed Wasimuddin, chief spokesman of SBP. The Fund had set the target of minimum 671 million dollars for NFA and Rs 1,412 billion for NDA, he said, adding that the central bank had met both targets successfully.