Daily Times

Minister for Finance Miftah Ismail Tuesday said talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the staff-level agreement will hopefully begin on June 30. Speaking to a news channel, Miftah said the government was hopeful that the duration of the program will be extended by a year. “The Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) was received today and the authorities concerned will need at least two days to read the document,” he said. Earlier in the day, Mifath took to his Twitter and shared that Pakistan had received the MEFP from the IMF for the seventh and eighth reviews. This is a critical development signaling that the two sides have reached an agreement. The draft MEFP is a prerequisite to paving the way toward striking a staff-level agreement. Now that Pakistan has received this document, it will be analyzed and scrutinized by the country’s economic team. The finance minister and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) governor will then sign the framework if no major problem is found, says a news report. The staff-level agreement will then be presented before the IMF’s Executive Board for approval, after which the tranche will be released. The MEFP may be considered the crux of decisions negotiated between Pakistan and the Fund because it includes policy actions and structural benchmarks the two sides agreed on. Miftah Ismail had told the National Assembly recently that although the country was rife with negative sentiments expressed by many financial quarters, it looked very likely that the restoration of the IMF program was in the offing. He had said that keeping in view the erratic policies followed by successive governments in respect of managing the economy, almost all international financial institutions have become wary while dealing with Pakistan.