In virtual negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the government will finalize revenue and expenditure figures for the next four months.
The IMF team, led by Pakistan mission chief Nathan Porter, met with finance ministry officials for two days before meeting with tax officials on Friday to assess the impact of earlier initiatives on revenue generation and fiscal gaps.
To close the shortfall, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) must raise Rs170bn in income while reducing subsidies and raising gas and electricity prices will reduce the rest.
The source said both sides would fine-tune the language of a draught Memorandum of Economic and Fiscal Policy (MEFP), also known as the staff-level agreement (SLA), starting Monday.
Finance Secretary Hamed Yaqoob Sheikh informed a parliamentary finance committee on February 21 that the MEFP would be finalized within a week. However, it did not happen, and the finance ministry reported that the IMF had requested four more prior acts.
On Saturday, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had received $500 million from the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) as part of the IMF’s conditions for bilateral lending (ICBC).
Pakistan got the first of three installments on Friday after the Chinese bank authorized a $1.3bn loan rollover for the cash-strapped nation.
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