It turns out that the program with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not so on-track as the government has led everyone to believe. And the same issues that stalled it in January, long before it was properly suspended so that the government could bypass some of its clauses and make emergency concessions because of the coronavirus pandemic, continue to hold back its resumption. For the Fund is still not budging from its position that the government will have to increase electricity prices as well as employ additional revenue measures to make up for the gap in collection in order for it to consider the third tranche. This puts the government in something of a fix, of course, since the political climate is heating up and the last thing it wants is for a price hike and more taxes to coincide with the 11-party opposition protest. While on the other hand it badly needs to get the program back on track because it is staring a very uncomfortable financial crunch right in the face. That explains why the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet duly approved a 17 percent increase in electricity prices in late September on account of tariff adjustment for the November-June period, but it was shot down by the federal cabinet in the first week of October. Back in January too, when IMF linked an increase in electricity tariffs and bringing out a mini-budget worth about Rs200 billion to approval of the third tranche of the loan and the finance ministry agreed, the prime minister simply refused. So the IMF canceled the next board meeting and put the program on the side, even though the government kept claiming that all was well. Now the circular debt is simply out of control and the government just does not know what to do to control it. Already, in just over two years, it has doubled to over Rs2.3 trillion from where the PML-N government left it. The IMF’s suggestion, to increase prices and control the debt buildup, hasn’t worked so far with the prime minister. Yet his own idea, of bringing down prices by renegotiating terms of deals with Independent Power Producers (IPPs), hasn’t translated into any legally binding arrangements either. There’s also the matter of meeting the tax revenue target, of course, since there’s no way that the government would be able to meet the ambitious target set for this year. This is the point when people of Pakistan are supposed to get shocked all over again. Why did the Fund and the government agree to such a steep target even though both knew well enough that it would never be met? And why, now that we are close to the point where something will have to be done about the shortfall, must the Fund expect the government to take steps that will surely harm a great majority of the people in what are already very testing times? Getting the IMF program back on track will not be as easy as everybody had first imagined. *