Pakistan’s tryst with the IMF
Second chances are rare. Pakistan has had innumerable chances of participating in loan programmes supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But this is half the truth. Most of the…
IMF prescriptions
As expected, the PTI government succeeded in passing both the Finance (Supplementary) Bill and the State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill 2021 from the National Assembly. The opposition made fiery…
IMF: rhetoric and reality
All the hullabaloo and rhetoric aside, it was never a question of ‘would?’ but of ‘when’. The Finance (Supplementary) Bill, 2021 – aka the mini-budget – recently rammed through the…
Towards an improved IMF programme
‘[Pakistan’s] GDP growth fell to a little under 4 percent a year over 1988–2000, compared to almost 6 percent in the two previous decades, with a sharp slowdown in capital…
IMF: What was PM’s real mistake?
While addressing a select group of senior journalists in Islamabad on December 8, 2020, the Prime Minister made a stunning admission that not going to the IMF at the earliest…
‘World Economic Outlook’ and IMF’s own performance
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released the April edition of its flagship report ‘World Economic Outlook (WEO)’ titled ‘Managing divergent recoveries’, where it revised upward its earlier projection for…
IMF: capitulation?
Shaukat Tarin since his appointment on 16 April 2021 as Finance Minister has repeatedly pledged that he would renegotiate the extremely harsh terms and conditions agreed by Dr Hafeez Sheikh…
IMF’s conditionalities
The uncertainty seems to be over, almost. We are going to the International Monetary Fund ( ) by end March for a new programme, as according to the federal finance…
The IMF programme
The International Monetary Fund (IMF)-Pakistan relationship has a history of over 60 years, starting in 1958 with a loan agreement of $ 0.3 billion to the current 2019 loan of…
Status of the IMF programme
There continues to be a hiatus in the finalization of the sixth review of the IMF Extended Fund Facility to Pakistan. The Pakistan economic team, led by the Finance Minister…
