IMF not willing to give bailout package to Pakistan: Ex-FM Miftah
- Miftah Ismail asserted that Washington-based lender is “uninterested ” in lending Pakistan money.
- Now that Sri Lanka has obtained finance from the multilateral lender.
- To restart a $6.5 billion IMF loan package, Pakistan has adopted complex steps.
Former finance minister Miftah Ismail asserted that the Washington-based lender is “uninterested” in lending money to the cash-strapped country. At the same time, Pakistan continues to court the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to obtain the much-needed bailout from the international lender.
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Now that Sri Lanka has obtained finance from the multilateral lender and Bangladesh is continuing to implement IMF-mandated reforms, Pakistan is the only South Asian nation that has not yet received assistance from the lender.
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To restart a $6.5 billion IMF bailout package, Pakistan has adopted complicated steps such as raising taxes and energy costs and allowing its currency to weaken. The money will provide some respite to a country still struggling from a dollar shortage, which has increased the likelihood of the economy entering a recession before this year’s elections.
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Miftah, the leader of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), said during a session titled “Pakistan in the midst of Crisis” organized by a private university in Karachi that when he was Minister of Finance, he spoke to IMF officials and assured them that Pakistan would not make false statements or violate the agreement; however, when Ishaq Dar was sworn in, “he sabotaged the agreement.”
