No new conditions accepted from IMF

ISLAMABAD:

Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar has said that the first accord reached with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its loan programme has neither been altered nor have any new pre-conditions been accepted.

She said that new taxes will have to be slapped to come out of the clutches of the IMF. Khar said this while participating in a budget debate in the National Assembly (NA) on Saturday.

She said that the present budget had been worked out in exceptional circumstances.

The previous budget was presented in a different situation, she said, adding “we have handled the IDP (internally displaced persons) issue in a befitting manner. It will be for the first time in the history of the country that provincial development budgets will surpass the federal budget.”

“We acknowledge that we failed to bring down inflation to the marked nine per cent but we have succeeded largely in bringing it down from 25 per cent,” she said.

Gross domestic product growth rate is projected at six per cent, she added. She said that the scope was still there for improvement in the system of remittances, adding that remittances rose 14 per cent this year which was far better than the past. ONLINE

Published in the Express Tribune, June 13^th,2010.