The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has extended the date for the sixth review of Pakistan and will now meet on 2 February for the fate of the stalled $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program.
The IMF website, which lists its Executive Board Calendar, showed that the discussion of “2021 Article IV Consultation, Sixth Review Under the Extended Arrangement Under the Extended Fund Facility, and Requests for Waivers of Nonobservance of Performance Criteria and Rephasing of Access” would be taken up on 2 February 2022.
Initially adjourned for 12 January 2022, the IMF’s Executive Board has once again rescheduled Pakistan’s case for the completion of the sixth review after the Ministry of Finance formally requested the global lender to postpone the approval of the review until either the end of January 2022 or early February.
Sources said the Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Shaukat Tarin, reached out to the global lender over the delayed approval of the SBP Amendment Bill 2021, one of the two prior conditions for the review. The bill was earlier passed by the National Assembly on 14 January.
The meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue has been called on 27 January, which is likely to pass the bill in question during the same sitting.
Pakistani authorities and IMF staff had reached a staff-level agreement on policies and reforms needed to complete the sixth review under the $6 billion Extended Fund Facility in November last year.
