ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has sought benchmarks from the International Monetary Fund for the current month to remain eligible for the $11.3 billion standby arrangement (SBA) facility which is suspended since May last year.
An official source at the Finance Ministry said the technical-level talks with the IMF had started and Pakistan had asked the IMF to set performance benchmarks for March to put the suspended SBA facility on track.
IMF Mission Chief for Pakistan Adnan Mazarei would lead the policy-level talks from March 3 to 9. He said the economic team would seek an upward revision in the budget deficit target from 4.7 percent of the GDP to over 5 percent of the GDP and a downward revision in tax collection target from Rs 1.604 trillion to Rs 1.600 trillion as performance benchmark for end of June.
After the negotiations, the government plans to take more tax measures that would be announced by the mid March. The economic team would share its plans with the IMF for containing the budget deficit, he said, adding that the government was hopeful of improvement in the federal tax collection keeping in view the trend in the last two months.
He said the government had contained the budget deficit at 2.9 percent of the GDP during the July to December period of the current fiscal year. The authorities believe that the budget deficit would be curtailed at just over 5 percent of the GDP by the end of the current fiscal year.
He said Pakistan was not seeking the withheld tranche of $1.7 billion from the IMF, but the focus of the current talks was to complete the uncompleted fifth review and putting the already suspended $11.3 billion SBA loan programme on track.
