ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Miftah Ismail on Monday clarified that the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) $6-billion loan program is on track and there is no truth in reports that the lender has delayed it.
Sharing a report on his Twitter handle, Miftah Ismail declared: “I am reading with some amusement that all tweets and stories about the IMF program are being postponed or delayed due to the Anti-Corruption Act.”
“The IMF program is on track,” he said.
‘Pakistan got MEFP from IMF’
On 28 June, Ismail said that Pakistan had received the draft Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) from the International Monetary Fund for joint 7th and 8th reviews.
The minister announced this on Twitter.
“This morning the Government of Pakistan received the MEFP from the IMF for the 7th and 8th Joint Review,” he tweeted.
The draft MEFP is a prerequisite to pave the way for moving towards employee-level agreement.
The MEFP, in a sense, can be considered the root of the decisions negotiated between the two sides as it includes policy actions and structural benchmarks agreed upon between the two sides.
The staff-level agreement will then be presented to the IMF’s executive board for approval next month, following which the tranche will be released.