Pak-IMF talks next week

ISLAMABAD: Amid increasing speculations about possibility of resignation by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are scheduled to initiate parleys from first week of next month (December) under Post Programme Monitoring (PPM) in order to gauge economic health of the country, The News has learnt.
Both the Ministry of Finance as well as the IMF high-ups confirmed on Sunday that the upcoming PPM negotiations would be held in first week of next month as the Fund mission agreed to visit Islamabad by lowering security alert. The IMF’s high-ups are expected to get increased perks and privileges for visiting Islamabad amid tight security situation.
The IMF team has so far agreed to visit Islamabad in first week of December and will stay here for almost seven to ten days for gauging the economic health of the country. The IMF’s findings about strong economic fundamentals can pave the way for getting dollar inflows in shape of loans from multilateral banks such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB). The upcoming talks under the PPM are quite crucial for Pakistan owing to increased vulnerabilities on internal and external accounts of the country as yawning current account deficit and its financing would have far reaching impact for the country’s economy. The government had taken measures to enhance and impose Regulatory Duty (RD) on several items and also placed non-tariff barriers in order to discourage rampant increase in imports. But these steps were taken by the government after lapse of several months, so its impact would come on surface with some delay.