The executive board of the International Monetary Fund will meet on April 29 to discuss the approval of $1.1 billion funding for Pakistan, the fund said on Wednesday.
\nThe funding is the second and last tranche of a $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with the IMF, which it secured last summer to avert a sovereign default and which runs out this month.
\nThe South Asian nation is seeking a new long-term, larger IMF loan. Pakistan\u2019s Finance Minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, has said Islamabad could secure a staff-level agreement on the new program by early July.
\nIslamabad says it is seeking a loan over at least three years to help macroeconomic stability and execute a long-due and painful structural reforms, though Aurangzeb has declined to detail what seize of programme the country seeks.
\nIslamabad is yet to make a formal request, but the Fund and the government are already in discussions.
\nIf secured, it would be the 24th IMF bailout for Pakistan.
\nThe $350 billion economy faces a chronic balance of payment crisis, with nearly $24 billion to repay in debt and interest over the next fiscal year\u2013three-time more than its central bank\u2019s foreign currency reserves.
\nPakistan\u2019s finance ministry expect the economy to grow by 2.6% in the current fiscal year ending June, while average inflation is projected to stand at 24%, down from 29.2% in fiscal year 2023\/2024.
\nInflation soared to a record high of 38% last May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The executive board of the International Monetary Fund will meet on April 29 to discuss the approval of $1.1 billion funding for Pakistan, the fund said on Wednesday. The funding is the second and last tranche of a $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) with the IMF, which it secured last summer to avert a sovereign …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":63772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63788"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63801,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63788\/revisions\/63801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}