IMF

The unprecedented decision will help defuse the landmines laid by the government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan on the one hand, and will save the country from looming default on the other, The Express Tribune reported. Finance Minister Miftah Ismail made the decision public in an unscheduled news conference after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gave him the go-ahead in a party meeting.

Pakistan's Finance Minister Miftah Ismail, who landed back in Islamabad after unsuccessful negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, said the country needs to implement a tight monetary policy and consolidate its fiscal position to revive and extend the $6 bn Extended Fund Facility.

Speaking to the BBC, Georgieva said that such similar unrest before the Covid-19 pandemic, from France to Chile, was caused by "a sense of inequality growing" and decisions being made without the support of the people.

The understanding has been reached between Pakistan Finance Minister Miftah Ismail and IMF Deputy Managing Director Antoinette Sayeh in Washington, sources told The Express Tribune on Sunday. Subject to the final modalities, the IMF has agreed that the programme will be extended by another nine months to one year as against the original end-period of September 2022, the sources added.

Sanctions against Russia could undermine the global dominance of the US dollar, according to Gita Gopinath, the First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "The dollar would remain the major global currency even in that landscape, but fragmentation at a smaller level is certainly quite possible," Gopinath said in an interview with the Financial Times, RT reported.

The trust and confidence of the citizenry in the current government’s is at record low due to the administrations’ financial mishandling and subordination to the conditions proposed by the IMF for foreign loans to govern the country, as per a report by a media outlet “Islam Khabar”.  

"While the global recovery is projected to continue this year and next, risks to growth remain elevated by the stubbornly resurgent pandemic. Given the risk that this could coincide with faster Fed tightening, emerging economies should prepare for potential bouts of economic turbulence," Stephan Danninger, chief of the IMF's Macro Policies Division in the Strategy Policy and Review Department, said in a blog with his colleagues.

"While the global recovery is projected to continue this year and next, risks to growth remain elevated by the stubbornly resurgent pandemic. Given the risk that this could coincide with faster Fed tightening, emerging economies should prepare for potential bouts of economic turbulence," Stephan Danninger, chief of the IMF's Macro Policies Division in the Strategy Policy and Review Department, said in a blog with his colleagues.

The IMF's latest demands come in the wake of a request by Pakistan to get a three weeks extension in the process of implementing prior actions it committed to implement before the sixth review meeting with the global lender, scheduled for Wednesday. However, the demands have not been accepted by Pakistan.

FATF, the global body working to combat financing of terrorism and money laundering let Pakistan off the hook, despite Islamabad's repeated failure to adequately investigate and prosecute senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terrorist groups. Nevertheless, Pakistan remains grey-listed -a dubious position that it has maintained for more than three years in a row.