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Talks with IMF on $360m SBA commence today Talks with IMF on $360m SBA commence today
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ISLAMABAD: A delegation of the country s finance managers has left for Dubai to attend the first quarterly review meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which begins on Monday. The Nov 2-12 meeting will focus on a request by Islamabad for the grant of $360 million as standby arrangement in addition to the $840 million quarterly tranche. Finance ministry officials told Dawn that Pakistan had requested for additional grants because of the delay in disbursements of the funds pledged at the Friends of Pakistan Forum meetings. However, an IMF official said that power tariff issue was likely to dominate technical talks. Even the World Bank in its recent report had highlighted that Pakistan was failing to implement the scheduled increases in power tariffs, the official said, adding that the IMF gave importance to determinations of other donor agencies. IMF authorities are expected to review the country s progress on performance benchmarks. Before leaving for Dubai, Finance Secretary Salman Siddique said that the target was to bring down fiscal deficit to 1.2 per cent of GDP, but it was stuck at 1.5 per cent. Mr Siddique said it was because we had to pay additional Rs35 billion in terms of salaries because of the Eid in September and this has been conveyed to IMF authorities . He said that the FBR would achieve the collection target of Rs108 billion for October. The first eight days of the meeting would focus on technical sessions, likely to be attended by the adviser to the finance ministry, the additional secretary (budget), additional secretary (external finance), the chairman FBR and State Bank officials. The last three days will focus on policy-level talks. The finance minister and the governor of the State Bank are expected to attend the session. The results would be reviewed by the IMF board at the end of this month. The next tranche of $1.2 billion is also expected to be released this month. However, Pakistan will receive only three tranches from IMF in the current financial year because of delays in the finalisation of quarterly figures, and also because meetings with IMF were held two months after the quarter instead of every fourth month.