Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves will likely hit $14 billion at year-end as the country is expected to receive funds from friendly countr
Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves will likely hit $14 billion at year-end as the country is expected to receive funds from friendly countries, World Bank, and other multilateral institutions along with pledges made at the Geneva Conference, economist Abid Qaiyum Suleri has said.
“We received $1.2 billion from the IMF, $2 billion from Saudi Arabia and $1 billion from UAE. These funds will be then used to repay the loans of around $11 billion till December 2023. This practice has been going on for decades where we take more loans to repay the former ones,” he said on Aaj News show Rubaroo on Sunday.
While speaking about structural reforms asked by the International Monetary Fund, Suleri said that the government’s commitment to raising power and petroleum tariffs and raising key interest rates are easy to achieve.
Read: Pakistan assures IMF of taxing agriculture, construction sectors
“The important thing is structural and policy reforms such as privatising state-owned enterprises, taxing the undertaxed sectors and reducing federal government’s expenses. The upcoming government will need to act on it quickly as we will need to do another 3-year IMF programme,” he added.
PML-N’s Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh believed that although Pakistan was going through an economic crisis, there was “never” a threat of default.
“The sentiments of the foreign investors were dampened due to the political turmoil in the country. Now the situation is getting better as the Fitch rating agency upgraded our credit rating after a deal with the IMF,” he said.
Read: Why has the IMF been so strict on Pakistan this time?
Analyst Hassan Baig disagreed with Sheikh on the risk of default, saying when the prime minister and finance minister were claiming that Pakistan was saved from default it means that there were risks of default.
“Pakistan was definitely saved from default, but nobody can tell for how long it is safe. We will progress if we bring structural reforms and boost our exports,” he added.
Baig claimed that nobody in the bureaucracy is ready to take a decision on structural reforms such as privatisation, as he said: “Everyone is afraid that NAB or FIA will come after them”.
For him, NAB was established just to “victimise” opponents by the ruling parties.
www.aajenglish.tv