WASHINGTON: According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan will receive $1.17 billion tranche”straight away” as a result of its agreement with the IMF.
It is an agreement on the seventh and eighth reviews of the programme as a whole, which will result in Pakistan receiving about $1.17 billion. At a news briefing in Washington on Thursday afternoon, IMF Communication Director Gerry Rice said, “Pretty much right away.”
On Wednesday, the IMF and Pakistan came to a staff-level agreement that they hoped would stabilise the economy and depreciating currency of the nation.
Additionally, the IMF hoped that it would reduce Pakistan’s high inflation and put an end to its political unrest.
According to Mr. Rice, the agreement “could also unlock more funding for Pakistan, which has been on the verge of a balance of payments crisis in recent weeks.”
The IMF representative stated that this agreement was for a combined seventh and eighth review of the Fund’s programme with Pakistan.
And we’re hoping that this will, among other things, help stabilise the macroeconomic environment in Pakistan, expand the social safety net to protect the most vulnerable, and speed up structural reforms.
According to Aqdas Afzal, a Karachi-based analyst and assistant professor of economics at Habib University, the IMF’s announcement will give Pakistan’s struggling economy a much-needed boost.
He pointed out that the country had been harmed by the sharp rise in energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine and by rising commodity prices more generally.
Reviving the loan programme and reviving the economy “have been a political litmus test for Pakistan’s new prime minister,” the newspaper noted.
The government’s concern that the IMF-mandated reforms might result in “public backlash that could hurt PML-chances N’s of success in the next general elections” was also highlighted in the report.