Pakistan to cut expenditures, development funds to revive IMF programme

Pakistan will need to cut expenditures and development funds to try and revive an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said on Wednesday.

"We will seek revival of the IMF programme, and we will, God willing, do belt tightening, and cut PSDP (Public Sector Development Funds)," Ismail told a news conference in Islamabad.

Ismail said he would be travelling to Washington later in the day to attend an IMF meeting. Pakistan is waiting for the IMF to resume talks on its seventh review of the $6 billion rescue package agreed in July 2019.

With a yawning current account deficit and foreign reserves falling to as low as $10.8 billion, the South Asian nation is in dire need of external finances.
 

A new Pakistani government that took over earlier this month from ousted PM Imran Khan said it was facing enormous economic challenges, with the fiscal deficit likely to exceed 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of the current financial year in June.

The new government of PM Shehbaz Sharif has also got to deal with double-digit inflation.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Kim Coghill)

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