WASHINGTON: According to The News on Sunday, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb expressed hope that Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will come to a staff-level agreement by mid-July for the next enlarged loan package.
At the end of his week-long visit to the US, Aurangzeb spoke to journalists at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and stated that a robust economy requires implementing the long-ignored economic reform agenda.
Masood Khan, the Pakistani ambassador to the US, was also present on this occasion.
The minister expected that by mid-May, an IMF team will visit Pakistan to finalize the details of the new extended loan arrangement. “The draft of the new program will be created later. We will start digging deeper into the project’s details by mid-May,” he said.
He praised the existing Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) as a success and voiced hope that the final 1.1 billion dollars will be released by the end of April, pending clearance from the IMF executive board. The IMF has already announced that, at a meeting before the end of this month, its executive board will examine Pakistan’s SBA.
The path for economic reform is obvious. We have the initiative; therefore, we must put in a lot of effort. There is a push to get into the Chinese market. Tax revenues will increase with tax system improvements. On the other hand, we are also introducing digitalization to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) system,” he declared.
