ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar Sunday said that Pakistan would deliver on commitments made with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ensure the successful completion of the second program during his tenure.

Addressing a news conference, the finance minister said that the first IMF program was completed when he was finance minister during the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government in 2016. We will make every effort to honour the commitments made with the Fund so as to ensure that the ongoing program, which has been extended till June 2023 is also completed. He also stated that the ninth review of the program would begin from October 25.

The finance minister said that recently the country’s rating was downgraded by Moody’s and one of the reasons was that Pakistan would be going to Paris Club for rescheduling of WB, ADB, IBRD, and even China’s AIIB loans.

“We have taken a conscious decision that Pakistan would not go to Paris Club and fulfil obligations of multilaterals liabilities as per schedule,” he said, adding that there was also a concern in the international financial institutions that Pakistan bond, which would be maturing in December 2022, might be extended. He said that the government would pay bond in time and would not seek an extension in its maturity.

He said that the prime minister had received complaints from the business community that their shipments, whose LCs were opened, have arrived but payments are not being made. He said that last week he discussed the matter with the governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) about pending LCs as he wanted to do something about this issue before leaving for Washington to attend the annual meeting of the IMF-WB.

Pakistan will not seek Paris Club debt restructuring, says Ishaq Dar

He said that the government has also decided today as a first step that all the pending payments of LCs up to $50,000 would be cleared to address the grievances of the business community. He said that the total cases of pending payments are 7,952, which would be reduced to half now as by next week the decision would be implemented.

He said that the other day, the issue of five export-oriented industries of the country was also addressed and now five export-oriented industries would be provided Rs19.99 per unit.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022