Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said Pakistan is \u201cvery hopeful\u201d of finalising a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this month. \u201cWe are still very hopeful that the IMF program will materialise. Our ninth review by the IMF will match all terms and conditions and, hopefully, we\u2019ll have some good news this month,\u201d he told Anadolu in an exclusive interview in the Turkish capital Ankara. The premier was in Ankara for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s inauguration, one of dozens of heads of state and government who attended Saturday\u2019s ceremony. Islamabad has been negotiating with the IMF since early February for the release of $1.1 billion, part of a $6.5bn bailout package inked in 2019 by the previous government of former prime minister Imran Khan. The staff-level agreement for the tranche\u2019s release has been delayed since November, with more than 100 days gone since the last staff-level mission to Pakistan, the longest such delay since at least 2008. In total, about $2.7bn are left to be disbursed from the package, which is scheduled to expire this month. At the end of May, PM Shehbaz requested IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to help revive the stalled facility, but asserted that Pakistan does have a backup plan in place. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said last week that Pakistan will share its budget details with the Fund. He added that he would like the IMF to clear its 9th review before the budget, which is due to be presented in early June, as all the conditions for that had already been met. For its part, the IMF has said it remains in touch with Pakistan\u2019s authorities in order to pave the way for a board meeting before the financing programme expires at the end of June. Ordinarily, a board meeting on a review of the programme would require a prior staff-level agreement. During his interview with Anadolu, PM Shehbaz said, \u201cWe have met all conditionalities. I repeat, each and every requirement of the IMF as prior actions has been met. \u201cSome of those actions are usually met after the board\u2019s approval, but this time the IMF required that those actions be met before the board\u2019s approval, so we have met them.\u201d On contingency plans in case the IMF talks fall through, PM Shehbaz emphasised the resilience and fortitude of the Pakistani nation. He said the people of Pakistan had faced challenges in the past, and if needed, will \u201ctighten our belt\u201d and rise again. According to the premier, Pakistan has been facing a plethora of problems since April 2022, when the current government took over after Imran was ousted in a no-trust vote. The issues are the result of the previous government\u2019s policies, the deadly floods in August, and the inflation problem, he said. \u201cPakistan, in April 2022, was on the verge of default because the government of the day had violated the IMF agreement and the economy was in tatters,\u201d Shehbaz said. \u201cThen we had devastating floods in August 2022. Combined with that we are facing galloping inflation, because of the international situation.\u201d He asserted that his government has been able to navigate the challenges \u201cin the best possible fashion with the help of the people of Pakistan\u201d and \u201cbrotherly and friendly countries.\u201d \u2018Would any civilised country allow this kind of vandalism?\u2019 Commenting on the events of May 9 \u2014 when public and private properties, including military installations, were vandalised amid protests over Imran\u2019s arrest in a graft case, PM Shehbaz said the PTI chief faced charges of \u201cserious corruption, malpractice, and wheeling-dealing\u201d, and the \u201claw had to deal with this.\u201d \u201cHe (the PTI chief), for a period of time, had been preparing his people mentally, his bunch of thugs, as I call it, to react violently, in case he\u2019s arrested,\u201d PM Shehbaz alleged. \u201cHe planned this very serious act against the state of Pakistan. He incited his people. There\u2019s evidence beyond any doubt,\u201d he said, further alleging that the PTI chief\u2019s supporters were instructed to torch buildings, attack institutions, and desecrate graves and monuments. The PTI chief has distanced himself from the incidents of violence and vandalism and called for an independent inquiry into the matter. Meanwhile, the government has decided to try those accused of attacking military installations under army laws. \u201cThose people who have attacked civilian installations will be tried under civilian law, and those people who attacked military installations and desecrated institutions will be tried under the military act,\u201d PM Shehbaz told Anadolu. He maintained that the act has been in place since 1951 and, apart from military personnel, allows for the trial of civilians who have \u201cdirect or indirect connection\u201d with certain criminal acts. \u201cUnder this act, once the judge awards punishment, the defendant has two appeals \u2014 one in the high court and then in the Supreme Court of Pakistan,\u201d he said. The \u201cbottom line of this entire process\u201d is ensuring justice \u201cso that this never takes place in Pakistan, for the rest of our life,\u201d PM Shehbaz added. \u201cWould any civilised country allow this kind of vandalism against the state, which happened on May 9 in Pakistan?\u201d he continued. \u201cI just want to cite one example, which is what happened on January 6, 2021 at Capitol Hill in Washington. Aren\u2019t those perpetrators being tried and given severe punishments so that such an act never happens again in the history of the United States?\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said Pakistan is \u201cvery hopeful\u201d of finalising a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this month. \u201cWe are still…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7306,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"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-7305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305","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=7305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}