The International Monetary Fund (IMF) board met on Wednesday in Washington to give a nod to the staff-level agreement with Pakistan after Islamabad promised to overhaul its agriculture income tax, transfer some fiscal responsibilities to provinces and agree to limit subsidies. It is the 25th IMF programme that Pakistan has obtained since 1958 and the sixth EFF.
Pakistan will pay around 5 per cent interest rate on the loan. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday reiterated this would be Pakistan’s last IMF programme.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday said that it has received the first tranche of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) 760 million, equivalent to $1.03 billion, from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“Following the approval of the IMF Executive Board of a 37-month Extended Fund Facility amounting to US$7 billion, the SBP has received the first tranche of SDR 760 million (equivalent to USD 1026.9 million) from the IMF today,” the central bank said.
These inflows will be reflected in SBP liquid reserves to be released on Thursday, October 3, 2024, it added.
The IMF Executive Board approved the 37-month, $7-billion Extended Fund Facility for Pakistan on Wednesday.
The Pakistani authorities and the IMF team reached a staff-level agreement on the EFF in the amount equivalent to SDR 5,320 million (or about USD 7 billion) on July 12.
