Premier says int\u2019l financial bodies have acknowledged Pakistan\u2019s positive economic indicators and upgraded credit ratings
\nISLAMABAD
\nExpressing satisfaction over the \u201cnosediving of inflation rate\u201d in the country, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that the economy is moving towards stability owing to the hard work of the government\u2019s financial team.
\nCiting the details shared by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS), the prime minister said on Sunday that the \u2018Consumer Price Index\u2019 fell to record low in July 2024, bringing inflation to 11% and welcomed the forecast of further decline in the inflation rate in the current month of September. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Finance \u2014 in its monthly outlook report \u2014 stated that on account of stability in economic indicators, inflation is expected to remain within the range of 9.5-10.5% in August and further decline to 9-10% in September.
\n\u201cAfter Fitch, the global rating agency, Moody\u2019s recently upgraded Pakistan\u2019s credit rating, which is an acknowledgement of the country\u2019s positive economic indicators by the international financial institutions,\u201d the PM Office Media Wing, in an official statement, quoted the premier as saying. The government is pursuing a policy of economic reforms and the implementation work is rapidly in progress over the rightsizing policy of the government which the premier himself is monitoring, according to the communique.
\nPM Shehbaz also expressed the confidence that its positive impact on the economy would be visible soon.
\nAt the same time he also acknowledged that the federal and Punjab governments had provided a big relief to the electricity consumers in respect of monthly bills, adding the prices of petroleum products were further reduced from today.
\nThe Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led government announced a reduction of Rs14 per unit in the electricity tariff for August and September under a power subsidy plan for consumers using 201 to 500 units.
\nThe premier said that the government believed in passing on all the benefits of such policies to the common man. \u201cThe government is cognizant of the issues of the people and was striving day and night to resolve them,\u201d he added.
\nEarlier in August, Moody\u2019s Ratings upgraded Pakistan\u2019s local and foreign currency issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings to Caa2 from Caa3 owing to improvement in macroeconomic conditions.
\n\u201cWe have also upgraded the rating for the senior unsecured MTN programme to (P)Caa2 from (P)Caa3. Concurrently, the outlook for the Government of Pakistan has changed to positive from stable,\u201d the rating agency said in a statement.
\nAccordingly, Pakistan\u2019s default risk has reduced to a level consistent with a Caa2 rating, as per Moody\u2019s. \u201cThere is now greater certainty on Pakistan\u2019s sources of external financing, following the sovereign\u2019s staff-level agreement with the IMF on 12 July 2024 for a 37-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of $7 billion.\u201d
\nThe release of the International Monetary Fund\u2019s (IMF) latest schedule is a significant development, but the absence of Pakistan\u2019s loan approval on the agenda is a cause of concern as it is critical for the country to secure the loan to shore up its sinking economy.
\nOn the other hand, the government remained optimistic that the country will secure approval for a $7 billion bailout package from the IMF next month, sources privy to the matters told Geo News earlier this week.
\nFinance Minister Aurangzeb last week also dismissed concerns about the IMF declining the staff-level agreement, exuding confidence that \u201cthe lender will approve it next month\u201d.
\nPakistan and the global lender had reached an agreement on the 37-month loan programme in July.
\nThe IMF said the programme was subject to approval from its Executive Board and obtaining \u201ctimely confirmation of necessary financing assurances from Pakistan\u2019s development and bilateral partners\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Premier says int\u2019l financial bodies have acknowledged Pakistan\u2019s positive economic indicators and upgraded credit ratings ISLAMABAD Expressing satisfaction over the \u201cnosediving of inflation rate\u201d in the country, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that the economy is moving towards stability owing to the hard work of the government\u2019s financial team. Citing the details shared by …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":68417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69682","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\/69682","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=69682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69695,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69682\/revisions\/69695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}