The funds are the final tranche of the latest $3 billion bailout package that Pakistan secured last summer to prevent it from defaulting on its debt. Islamabad is also seeking another long-term bailout.<\/p>\n
“The IMF staff has reached a staff-level agreement with the Pakistani authorities on the second and final review of Pakistan’s stabilisation programme,” the IMF said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“This agreement is subject to approval by the IMF’s Executive Board,” it added. The agreement expires on 11 April.<\/p>\n
The agreement came after five days of talks by an IMF delegation with Pakistani officials to review the fiscal consolidation criteria for the loan.<\/p>\n
Most Pakistani dollar bonds traded higher on Wednesday after the deal was announced.<\/p>\n
The 2027 bond was up 0.25 cents at 83.957 cents per dollar, while the 2025 bond was up 0.21 cents at 92.023 cents per dollar.<\/p>\n
Pakistan’s finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb had said Islamabad would seek a new long-term bailout. The IMF said Pakistan had shown interest in a deal and would set up a medium-term programme if Islamabad applied.<\/p>\n
The government has not officially disclosed the size of the additional funding it is seeking through the successor programme, but Bloomberg reported in February that Pakistan was planning to seek a new loan of at least $6 billion from the lender.<\/p>\n
The debt-ridden economy, which contracted by 0.2% last year and is expected to grow by around 2% this year, is under extreme stress with low reserves, a balance of payments crisis, inflation of 23%, policy rates of 22% and a record depreciation of the local currency.<\/p>\n
Prior to the stand-by arrangement, Pakistan had to meet IMF conditions such as revising its budget, raising interest rates, raising revenues through higher taxes and increasing inflationary electricity and gas prices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The funds are the final tranche of the latest $3 billion bailout package that Pakistan secured last summer to prevent it from defaulting on its debt. Islamabad is also seeking another long-term bailout. “The IMF staff has reached a staff-level agreement with the Pakistani authorities on the second and final review of Pakistan’s stabilisation programme,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1234,1983,916,315],"class_list":["post-3723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","tag-deal","tag-disbursement","tag-imf","tag-pakistan"],"yoast_head":"\n