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Access to stashed money in Swiss banks gets easier: Dar

By Monitoring Desk
July 27, 2016

Says Swiss authorities have withdrawn four conditions;
govt doesn’t want to take IMF loan any more

ISLAMABAD: Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday said that those who had hidden their billions of rupees in Swiss banks would not be able to escape now and the details of their accounts would be revealed before everyone.

In an interview with Geo News, Dar said Pakistan and Switzerland have reached an agreement over information sharing and the accounts in Swiss banks will no longer be a secret.

The authorities in Switzerland have withdrawn from their terms and the first phase of an agreement to share information has been finalised, said the minister.

“The Swiss authorities had done away with their four conditions provided to Pakistan in 2014. Now they have agreed to exchange information,” he stated.

“Initials have been made on the proposed draft while final signatures would be put on the paper once they complete their internal codal formalities for the purpose.”

He went on to say that the government did not intend to take any further aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“We appreciate their support for Pakistan with the hopes that we need no further revision of their programme after the 12th review,” he said, during the interview. “I am confident that we shall need no further support from the IMF.”

He said at present the foreign exchange reserves in Pakistan were touching the highest figure of US$23 billion. “When we came into power this figure stood at just US$6 billion and we had to pay US$2.8 billion by next February,” he added.

The minister said at that time Pakistan needed this programme because the projected reserves were quite insufficient to pay back previous loans.

As far as the IMF programme was concerned, out of it US$4.5 billion had been paid back, he said. A grave economic situation in 2013 forced us to approach the IMF.