This is apropos a Business Recorder news item "Fiscal consolidation or economic stimulus?: Country faced with difficult choice: Tarin" carried by the newspaper yesterday. According to it, Minister for Finance and Revenue Shaukat Tarin has said that "Pakistan has resumed the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme and is faced with a difficult choice to strike a balance between need for fiscal consolidation and ever-rising demand for economic stimulus amid Covid-19 and in post-Covid-19 scenarios."

Striking a delicate balance between IMF requirement of fiscal consolidation and growing popular demand for an economic stimulus is near impossible. The country is certainly in a difficult situation to choose between two divergent courses of actions. It is quite understandable that Pakistan doesn't want the IMF but it hates to lose it. Is there any creative solution? We hope strongly that something positive will happen.

Rashid Beg (Karachi)

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