Business desk
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has promised international lenders to stay true to economic reforms despite a new estimate that his country quickly needs more than $16 billion to recover from devastating floods.
Dar also said that a flood donors’ conference promised by French President Emmanuel Macron would take place next month which he hoped would help Pakistan both with immediate and longer-term needs.
The International Monetary Fund in late August released $1.1 billion to Pakistan as part of a $6 billion package sealed in 2019 as the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif moved forward on reforms.
“It will be our endeavour, even at the cost of extra effort, that we should complete the programme successfully,” Dar told AFP in an interview Friday evening in Washington.
Doing so “sends a positive signal to the international community and the markets,” he said, voicing appreciation to the “very responsive” promises of other nations for Pakistan.
Dar — who took the job for the fourth time last month after his predecessor quit — acknowledged political risks.
Former prime minister Imran Khan, the cricket star turned politician ousted in a no-confidence vote in April, has been plotting a return amid protests seeking an early election.
Imran late in his term slashed petrol prices, defying his own government’s package with the IMF, which says that subsidies should only benefit the neediest as Pakistan struggles to put its finances in order.
Dar said that some of his political allies had advocated letting Imran Khan stay on longer to face the consequences of the economic crisis.
lier this month once again downgraded the growth forecast for Pakistan, expecting its economy to expand by only two per cent in the year through June due to the floods as well as inflation and troubled finances.
Dar, while not criticizing the World Bank’s methodology, said he was a “little more optimistic” and envisioned growth of three per cent.
“I think things are settling down already,” he said, while not ruling out impacts from global troubles. Jihad Azour, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia department, said that a mission would visit Pakistan next month to start the next review. He reiterated concern about Pakistan’s blanket fuel subsidies, calling the policy “very regressive.”
