WASHINGTON: Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has said that they have initiated discussions with the IMF over a new multi-billion-dollar loan deal to support its economic reform program.
He expressed these remarks during an interview with AFP. With the final $1.1 billion tranche of that agreement expected to be approved later this month, Islamabad has begun talks for a new multi-year IMF loan program worth “billions” of dollars, Aurangzeb told AFP. The Minister said that the market confidence, sentiment is in much, much better form this financial year.
“It is really for that purpose that, during the course of this week, we have started the discussion with the IMF to get into a larger and an extended program,” the Minister said.
During his stay in Washington, Pakistan Finance Minister will also attend the spring meetings organized by the World Bank and IMF, which kick off in earnest Tuesday (today), with two clear objectives: to help nations combat climate change, and to assist the world’s most indebted countries.
The meetings — which bring central bankers together with finance ministers, representatives from the private sector and civil society and academics to discuss the state of world economy — will start with the IMF’s publication of its updated World Economic Outlook.
Pakistan held elections in February this year and the new coalition government led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is now making efforts to improve country’s economy. The Minister said, “I do think that we will at least be requesting for a three-year program. Because that’s what we need, as I see it, to help execute the structural reform agenda,” the Minister added.
Responding to a question he said that the current government plans to conduct its trading relationships with the world’s two main economies.
He said that US is our largest trading partner, and it has always supported Pakistan, always assisted then in terms of the investments. The Minister added that similarly a lot of investment, especially in infrastructure, came through China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The Minister said that there was a “very good opportunity” for them to play a similar role in the trade war as several nations like Vietnam, which has been able to boost its exports to America after the imposition of tariffs on some Chinese products.
He said “We have already a few examples of that already working. But what we need to do is to really scale it up.”
