ISLAMABAD: The federal capital is rife with speculation that the staff-level agreement on the seventh review between Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme is imminent and will be announced soon.
However, till the filing this report, the IMF had not uploaded any press release on the successful completion of the review and neither did the Ministry of Finance officially confirm the agreement.
A well-placed source within the Ministry of Finance; however, told this correspondent that the agreement with the Fund is almost finalized and the lender will release an official statement soon.
Sources further revealed that $1.2 billion disbursement is in the works which implies that the seventh and the eighth review have been clubbed together which, as per the sixth review documents, envisaged purchase of 687 million SDRs each for the two reviews.
Pakistan has reportedly met most of the prior conditions including reversing the relief package of 28 February announced by the previous government.
Pakistan reaches agreement with IMF to resume programme: report
Substantial revisions were made in the budget 2022-23 in the winding up speech of the Finance Minister which indicated that the government capitulated to all prior conditions with respect to fiscal policy. The upward revision of the discount rate to 15 percent on 7 July was reportedly another prior condition of the Fund.
Finance Minister Miftah Ismail publicly revealed on 28 June that the IMF had shared a draft of the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP), which details all time bound conditions and structural benchmarks. He had further elaborated that the MEFP was sent to relevant ministries who were reviewing the documents and would provide their comments that would be shared with the Fund.
Details of the MEFP would be made available after the Fund uploads the review documents on its website, subsequent to the Board approval of the tranche release.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022