ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Finance Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar on Monday began policy-level talks with the visiting staff mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the first review of Stand-By-Arrangement (SBA) in a bid to secure $710 million of the $3 billion loan programme.

The governor State Bank (SBP), the chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) as well as other senior officials of the Ministry of Finance, the FBR, the SBP and the Ministry of Energy also attended the meeting.

The IMF Mission Chief on behalf of the IMF, Nathan Porter, is leading his delegation.

An official said so far, talks have been progressing according to expectations, however, some issues that emerged during the technical level talks would be discussed during the policy level talks.

IMF wants SOEs under CMU oversight

He added that two sessions of talks have been held on Monday with one in the morning and one in the evening. In reply to a question about whether any new taxes have been proposed, they added that at this point in time, the FBR tax collection is slightly above target.

However, about external financing, another official said that the Fund might have raised some questions.

They added that economic data of different sectors was shared with the IMF during technical-level talks and expressed optimism about the successful completion of the first review.

Pakistan has fulfilled all important conditions of the IMF for the first review, they maintained.

On the first day of meeting with the caretaker Finance Minister Dr Shamshad Akhtar, the IMF mission raised questions about SOEs and sought briefing from the Finance Ministry.

Sources said the Finance Ministry has given a detailed briefing to the Fund team on state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and operationalisation of central monitoring and an agreement was also reached to bring three SOEs - Pakistan National Shipping Corporation (PNSC), Radio Pakistan, and Post Office – under the Finance Division CMU. The Fund also wanted that a periodic report on the performance of the SOEs should also be presented to the federal cabinet and made public.

The government has committed to the IMF in the SBA that to improve SOE oversight functions and provide better analysis at the aggregate SOE level, the authorities are advancing the delayed full operationalisation of a CMU within the Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the issuance of its first periodic report on the performance of SOEs to the government (end-November 2023).

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023