ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Tuesday claimed that all formalities for the ninth review for the tranche of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been completed however the issue of external funding is left.
Addressing a ceremony in Islamabad, he reminisced about the performance of the PML-N government during its last tenure when Pakistan was emerging as an economic giant.
The minister said that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government signed an agreement with the IMF in 2019-20 but backed off in the middle, which brought defamation of the state.
He said that the incumbent government took decisions without caring about its political capital. Dar said that the IMF team arrived in Pakistan three months late for the ninth review, following which it was completed technically.
He said that the tax proposal, however, put by the global lender was Rs800 billion but the government negotiated it to reduce it to Rs170 billion. The minister said that the government fulfilled the ‘commitments’ of the state.
Only the issue of the gap in external funding is left, he added, and compared the situation after Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in 1998. However, Dar said that they had managed it. He also admitted that the economic growth is extremely slow.
