Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has stated that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not being fair to Pakistan, adding that the country is in a \u201ca perfect storm\u201d of crises.
\nCash-strapped Pakistan is in a race against time to implement measures to reach an agreement with the Fund. The agreement with the IMF on the completion of the ninth review of a $7 billion loan programme \u2014 which has been delayed since late last year \u2014 would not only lead to a disbursement of $1.2bn but also unlock inflows from friendly countries.
\nThe prerequisites by the lender are aimed at ensuring Pakistan shrinks its fiscal deficit ahead of its annual budget around June.
\nPakistan has already taken most of the other prior actions, which included hikes in fuel and energy tariffs, the withdrawal of subsidies in export and power sectors, and generating more revenues through new taxation in a supplementary budget.
\nAs a last step, the international lender has required Pakistan to guarantee that its balance of payments deficit is fully financed for the remaining period of an IMF programme.
\nIn a wide-ranging interview with the Associated Press on Friday, Bilawal said that Pakistan was facing an economic crisis, the consequences of last year\u2019s catastrophic flooding and terrorism which was \u201conce again rearing its ugly head\u201d.
\nAccording to the report, the minister sharply criticised the IMF.
\nBilawal said the PPP supported expanding revenue collection and believed those who were well off should pay more, but added that Pakistan had been unable to achieve structural tax reform \u201cfor the last 23 IMF programmes that we have been a part of.\u201d
\n\u201cIs it really the time to nitpick about our tax policy and tax collection while we\u2019re suffering from a climate catastrophe of this scale?\u201d Bilawal asked.
\nThe IMF is not being fair to Pakistan, which is also dealing with 100,000 new refugees following the West\u2019s withdrawal from Afghanistan and \u201ca steady uptick of terrorist activities within our country,\u201d the publication quoted him as saying.
\nHe further said that the IMF was stretching out talks at a time when the country needed money to help the \u201cpoorest of the poor\u201d.
\n\u201cAnd they\u2019re being told that until their tax reform is not complete, we will not conclude the IMF programme.\u201d
\nHe said that Pakistan was able to navigate the Covid-19 pandemic, the Taliban\u2019s takeover of Afghanistan, as well as inflation and supply chain disruptions.
\nBut then last year\u2019s floods devastated the country, he said, calling it the \u201cbiggest, most devastating climate catastrophe that we\u2019ve ever experienced.\u201d
\nPak-China ties
\nHe further said that Pakistan had a \u201cvery healthy economic relationship\u201d with China that was \u201calso in the spotlight as a result of geopolitical events\u201d.
\nHe said the government was \u201cvery grateful\u201d to Beijing for the $1.3bn loan announced earlier this month, especially in light of the floods.
\n\u201cThe government of China have supported Pakistan whether by rolling over our debt or by providing economic assistance in one form or the other,\u201d the foreign minister said. \u201cI am not concerned about this issue at the moment. We need help and support from wherever we can get it.\u201d
\nHe said that in order to meet the country\u2019s energy needs and to provide relief to citizens paying for expensive imported fuel the government was \u201clooking to work with anyone, including Russia\u201d.
\nHe added that he believed there was now space for imports from Russia within the US price cap.
\nAfghanistan
\nTalking about Pak-US ties, Bilawal said, \u201cWe are on a healthy trajectory.\u201d
\nHe pointed to talks on climate, health, technology and trade. He added that Pakistani officials had also met recently to discuss counterterrorism.
\nAccording to the publication, Bilawal said that Pakistan\u2019s \u201calleged influence over the Taliban has always been exaggerated\u201d.
\nHe said Pakistan, however, had always maintained the importance of engaging with the Taliban on terrorism and other issues, especially women\u2019s rights to education and jobs.
\nHe said Pakistan would like to see the Taliban take action against all terrorist groups, but said there were questions about their capacity to combat these groups.
\nBilawal said his advice to the West is to engage with the Taliban \u201cregardless of what\u2019s going on on the ground\u201d. He said that without a functioning economy, there won\u2019t be \u201cspace\u201d for the Taliban to implement political decisions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has stated that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not being fair to Pakistan, adding that the country is in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5280,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}