Pak finance minister hopes for successful IMF review

Islamabad, Feb 25 (PTI) As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) review mission arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday, the country’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb hoped for a successful review leading to the release of a USD 1.2 billion tranche.

The staff mission will conduct the third review under the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) of USD 7 billion and the second review under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) of USD 1.1 billion, according to statements by the IMF and Ministry of Finance.

The IMF mission, led by Iva Petrova, landed in Karachi where it began discussion with officials. It will stay in Pakistan until March 11 to complete the two reviews.

Successful completion of the reviews is expected to unlock approximately USD 1.2 billion — USD 1 billion from the EFF and USD 200 million from the RSF — by late April.

Aurangzeb said that Pakistan was getting ready for the third review, which “will cover both performance benchmarks and structural benchmarks, as well as a forward-looking assessment of the programme”.

He said that he will meet the IMF team in Islamabad for further discussions, describing them as a “meaningful conversation”, while noting it was too early to predict outcomes.

According to informed sources, the mission would hold talks on various issues afflicting the economy, including circular debt, electricity tariff adjustments and implementation of the Governance and Corruption Diagnostic report and the National Fiscal Pact.

The next budget of 2026-27 will also be reviewed in addition to efforts to stabilise the economy which has come way since it was feared in 2023 that the country would default on external obligations.

Recently, Pakistan registered improvement like reporting a primary fiscal surplus of 1.3 per cent of GDP for FY25, in line with programme targets, while the State Bank projected inflation to remain within the 5-7 per cent for FY26 and FY27. PTI SH GSP GSP