ISLAMABAD: The staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be signed in the coming days, according to Minister of Finance and Revenue Ishaq Dar, who stated this on Thursday that all conditions have already been met.
“We are very close to signing the agreement with the IMF and it would be done in the next few days”, he said while addressing a seminar “Reviving economic stability through strengthening of public financial management”,organised by the ministry of finance here. In spite of accepting stringent conditions from the previous administration, the minister claimed that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had already completed the full programme with the Fund in 2013–16 and was committed to doing so again now.
He said a shattered economy was handed over to the coalition government, however, it showed commitment and sincerity to the state by acting upon all the tough conditions made by the previous government with the IMF.
Ishaq Dar regretted that petty politics was still being played over Pakistan’s economy by spreading rumours about falling into default which he said was totally a nonsense attitude.
He said the bad economic crisis which the coalition government inherited was even more deeper and complex than that in 2013 and 1990s but with utmost sincerity and prudent policies of the government, the country had come out of the quagmire.
“We are now in a position to move forward with full confidence,” he said, adding that Pakistan had the resilience to meet the challenges as it had huge resources to cope with the problems, but the only thing that had been lacking was lack of consistency in policies and mismanagement in the fiscal sector.
The minister informed that the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio improved from 73% to 69% in a few years which meant that there was no need to worry about the debts of the country.
He said even the developed countries such as USA and UK had high debt-to-GDP ratios of over 100%, therefore “we need not to worry about”.
He said the country’s foreign exchange reserves got down due to the fact that the government had been only paying back the debts and not getting new debts for the last few months.
Ishaq Dar also invited all political parties to sit together for resolving the country’s long-standing economic issues by setting apart their differences.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Tariq Bajwa, pointing to the problem of the real estate sector, said that it had now become the most powerful group in the country. He said trillions of rupees were stuck up in the files of real estate which he called was a dead money. He said the real sector must be reformed and taxed.
Secretary Finance Hamid Yaqoob Sheikh, in his presentation, showed measures to be taken by the government including reforms in power, pensions taxation and privatisation sectors to ensure sustainable growth of the country’s economy.
Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) Muhammad Ajmal Gondal suggested promoting industrialization to substitute the imports and reduce the trade gap. He said the government should also equally focus on increasing revenues without burdening the common man.
Deputy Governor, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Dr Innayat Hussain said the only solution to overcome the subsidies issue was to expedite the privatisation process. “We need to think why we have not been able to privatize even a single entity for the last several years,” he said, adding that the privatisation structure and laws should be revisited to resolve this issue.
