Now that the government has bent over backwards and accepted so many of IMF’s harsh prior conditions, it’s simply unfair of the Fund to delay its announcement about the resumption of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), or otherwise, for no credible reason. Since all the demands it made were accepted one by one, albeit begrudgingly, what could possibly hold back the formal announcement except the fact that IMF might suddenly have thought of more conditions and hasn’t announced them yet? It’s also pretty unfortunate that opposition parties couldn’t resist the urge to exploit this opportunity and fired off a few tweets about another delay in the program, which promptly spooked markets and the rupee reversed its four-day turnaround after the longest slump. And now, on top of all the bleak economic indicators, there’s more downside pressure on the markets because nobody can explain the IMF’s unending silence. Why make the government lose so much political capital and traumatize the economy if the money all this was done for is still not coming? Even if the final decision to restore the facility hasn’t been taken by the Fund’s senior management, they should announce it without wasting any more time. Financial markets hate nothing more than uncertainty, not even bad news which can be priced in. And when markets dive investors a lot of money. Right now, Pakistani capital markets are gripped with completely unnecessary uncertainty just because the Fund is unable to communicate with the government even when its conditions have largely been met. The government must have relayed these concerns to the Fund, so it should hear back soon enough. Hopefully it will be more transparent with the people than the IMF has been with it because it raised hopes a number of times over the last couple of months, only to be proved wrong, which is eroding its political capital even more. *