Fund | Pakistan

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Friday said that Pakistan’s recent engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was “constructive”, adding that there appeared to be no “showstoppers” so far. An IMF mission led by Iva Petrova met with Pakistan’s economic team in Karachi and Islamabad from September 24 to October 8 to review the implementation of the $7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and $1.1bn Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). A day earlier, the Fund said that “significant progress” had been made towards finalising a staff-level agreement on the second review under the 37-month EFF and the first review of the 28-month RSF. “Programme implementation remains strong, and broadly aligned with the authorities’ commitments,” the IMF had said. Today, the minister virtually addressed a high-level business delegation from Saudi Arabia, which arrived in Pakistan on October 7, and said, “We have had very constructive engagement with the [IMF] mission here. “We have a few outstanding issu...