Pakistan said it would share budget details with the IMF to open the fund.

Islamabad, May 28/2010 Pakistan will soon share its budget details with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to unlock the frozen funds, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Sunday.

Analysts say hopes of restarting the IMF accord are fading as the 2019 bailout program expires on June 30 at the end of the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Dar said the IMF would like to clear the 9th review before the budget, which will be presented in early June, provided all conditions are met.

The IMF’s $350 billion loan is for the South Asian country, which has a critical balance of payments problem. This raised fears of a sovereign default, something the minister denied.

The central bank’s foreign reserves have been reduced enough to cover production, which has been under control for a month. Pakistan’s economy has slowed down, with GDP growth estimated at 0.29% in 2022-2023.

“They have asked for some things again, we are ready to give them, they will give us the budget details, we will give them,” Dar said in an interview with local Geo TV.

He said that if the IMF combined the 9th and 10th bailout reviews, it would not be beneficial for Pakistan.

In the year A $1.1 billion IMF loan to Pakistan, part of the $6.5 billion Extended Fund Facility agreed in 2019, has been on hold since November.

Islamabad hosted an IMF mission in February to negotiate a series of fiscal policy measures to clear the 9th review.

Pakistan had to complete a series of measures requested by the IMF, which included rolling back subsidies, increasing power and oil prices, increasing key policy rates, market-based exchange rates, organizing external financing and raising more than 170 billion. Rupees ($613 million) in new taxes.

The fiscal reforms fueled Pakistan’s high inflation, which reached 36.5 percent year-on-year in April.

Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Edited by Alexander Smith

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