Ishaq Dar and other senior officials are scheduled to visit Washington DC from April 10 to 16 to attend the Annual Spring Meeting of the Breton Wood Institutions (BWIs), also known as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB).
The finance minister, along with an official delegation consisting of the Finance and Economic Affairs Division secretaries and the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), may present new proposals to the IMF and WB for getting some cash, reported a national daily.
If the pending 9th review is completed, Pakistan and the IMF may also discuss the possibility of combining the remaining 10th and 11th reviews under the $6.5 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program.
The IMF program under the EFF will expire on June 30, 2023, and it cannot be extended beyond that date under the established guidelines.
It remains to be seen how Pakistan and the IMF will proceed with the program’s completion now that the 10th Review has been pushed back. The 9th review was supposed to be completed in December 2022, and the 10th review should have begun in February 2023, while the 11th review was set to begin on May 3.
Pakistan has assured the IMF that its foreign exchange reserves will be increased to $10 billion by the end of June. The lender wants the country to receive guarantees of up to $7 billion to cover the country’s balance of payments gap this fiscal year.
Pertinently, one of the requirements in the IMF is related to Net International Reserves (NIR), which can only be met after receiving assurances from friendly countries that a balance of payment gap will be filled.
