Dar begins talks with IMF in Dubai

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s 20-member delegation led by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has kick-started review talks with the IMF team in Dubai to convince the Fund to release the third tranche of worth $545 million under the $6.67 Extended Fund Facility (EFF). There will be two rounds of talks, including technical round and policy level talks, between the two sides.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who will stay in Dubai till February 5, will accomplish the round of talks with the Fund staff.

It is expected that the IMF’s Mission Chief Jeffery Franks will visit Pakistan to give final touches to the policy level talks with the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar around February 8, 2014. It will be the desire of the IMF team to meet with PM Nawaz Sharif if Jeffery Franks visited Pakistan. Officials who reached Dubai told The News on Saturday that Finance Minister Ishaq Dar was making efforts to meet with the top notches of UAE government for release of stuck up amount on account of PTCL privatization.

Although, a close relative of some top official has died in the UAE, the minister was making efforts to meet with the high-ups and convince them for the release of stuck-up amount on account of privatization of PTCL.

The IMF will review structural benchmark envisaged till December 2013. Pakistan had curtailed its budget deficit at 2.2 percent of GDP by curtailing expenditures and increasing non tax revenues. It was good omen for the FBR that it achieved 26 percent growth in January 2014 by collecting Rs168 billion this year as against a collection of Rs132 billion in the same month of the last financial year.