Pakistan will move to the fourth place in this list when it receives another $3 billion in the next nine months under the Stand-with the Washington-based global lender on Thursday….reports Asian Lite News
Debt-ridden Pakistan will become the fourth largest IMF borrower in the world after securing a $3 billion bailout package in the next nine months.
Pakistan, which is facing its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1947, was on March 31, 2023, ranked fifth in the list of countries with the highest borrowing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The Express Tribune newspaper reported, citing the global lender’s data.
However, Pakistan will move to the fourth place in this list when it receives another $3 billion in the next nine months under the Stand-with the Washington-based global lender on Thursday.
The deal comes after an eight-month delay and offers some respite to Pakistan, which is battling an acute balance of payments crisis and falling foreign exchange reserves.
According to Geo News, the federal government has taken a slew of policy measures since an IMF team arrived in Pakistan earlier this year, including a revised 2023-24 budget last week to meet the lender’s demands.
Other adjustments demanded by the IMF before clinching the deal included reversing subsidies in power and export sectors, hikes in energy and fuel prices, jacking up the key policy rate to 22 per cent, a market-based currency exchange rate and arranging for external financing.
It also got Pakistan to raise over 385 billion rupees (USD 1.34 billion) in new taxation through a supplementary budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year and the revised budget for 2023-24.
The painful adjustments have already fueled all-time high inflation of 38 per cent year-on-year in May, as per Geo News.