IMF board to okay Pakistan SLA on Jan 11

Its approval will disburse $700m tranche to country

KARACHI:

The executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will meet on January 11 to give the final nod to disburse the next $700 million tranche to Pakistan under the $3 billion Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) inked by the Washington-based lender with the country, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.

Last month, Pakistan and the IMF reached a Staff-Level Agreement (SLA) for the payment following the lender’s first review of the current programme.

In June this year, the IMF executive board approved the nine-month SBA, marking a significant achievement for Pakistan after its failure to revive the previous $6 billion programme on the same day.

The Washington-based lender’s executive board approved an immediate disbursement of $1.2 billion to Pakistan

in July 2023, with the rest to be handed over to the country subject to two quarterly reviews.

On November 15 this year, IMF Mission chief in Pakistan Nathan Porter announced that his team had reached an

SLA with the Pakistani authorities on the first review of their stabilisation programme.

He added that the agreement was subject to approval of the IMF’s executive board. “Upon approval, around $700 million … will become available bringing total disbursements under the programme to almost $1.9 billion,” he continued in a statement.

Previously, the finance ministry had anticipated a meeting of the IMF's executive board on December 7 to ratify the SLA with Pakistan.

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However, the IMF’s executive board members were not available in the last week of December and the first week of January because of Christmas and New Year holidays.

The IMF’s schedule updated on Monday listed around 12 countries whose cases, both Article-IV consultations and programme reviews, were on the executive board agenda until December 14.

The schedule had raised eyebrows as Pakistan’s case was absent on the agenda.

However, after the release of the schedule, officials from the finance ministry said an SLA agreement between Pakistan and the IMF had been settled, meaning that the country could be included in the executive board's agenda at any point.

Recently, Porter expressed his satisfaction over the SLA with Pakistan, saying that the present interim government's policies reflected its commitment to stabilise the economy of the country.

"With that base, hopefully, we can build on and be able to move forward to the reforms to build a stronger, prosperous and inclusive Pakistan," he said at an event hosted by Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, Masood Khan, at Pakistan House for the representatives of international financial institutions (IFIs) -- the IMF, International Finance Corporation, World Bank, and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

(With input from Reuters and our correspondent in Islamabad)