Pak, IMF to hold talks on economic stabilisation programme

Islamabad, Oct 20 : Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will hold negotiations on the Economic Stabilisation Programme this week in Abu Dhabi.

According to a senior official, the negotiations on the micro-economic programme would enable Pakistan to seek lending from the IMF without further negotiations, if Pakistan failed to get lending from other financial institutions within 30 days.

A Daily Times report said that the Pakistani team would present a economic stabilisation plan that got initial endorsement from international financial institutions (IFIs) during the recently concluded IMF annual general meeting at Washington.

Under the plan, the government has shown improvement in macro-economic indicators, reduction in fiscal deficit, elimination of non-productive expenditures, shifting of development projects from the Public Sector Development Programme to public-private partnership and major enhancement in revenue generation.

The official said the plan would bring around seven million poor people under the social safety net, train one member each of poor households to enable him to earn a living, and would provide health insurance.

The official also said that the government wanted to ensure the availability of six billion dollars through various initiatives so that the financial resource gap could be overcome and foreign exchange reserves were increased.

ANI