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ISLAMABAD: In an effort to break the impasse, the Ministry of Finance has given the IMF’s top brass a general outline of the negotiations with the hope that both parties will begin virtual talks the following week in an effort to restart efforts to reach a staff-level agreement.
A senior official of the Finance Division was quoted in The News saying that an email has been sent to the IMF and “we are waiting for their response.”
Although virtual talks are scheduled to begin on Monday, it is not yet known whether they will be formal or informal in nature. If official negotiations start, it will be a huge development because informal negotiations have been going on for the past 2.5 months.
The government, according to the report, shared basic contours of the upcoming round of talks with the IMF Mission Chief Nathan Porter. The areas discussed include fiscal consolidation, including taking additional taxation measures and curtailing expenditures to restrict the budget deficit within the envisaged limit agreed with the IMF, taking all required corrective measures to devise a sustainable roadmap for cash bleeding energy sector such as curtailing flow and stocks of the circular debt, hiking tariffs of electricity and gas sectors and bringing the exchange rate aligned to free market mechanism.
The official said that the IMF had already conveyed to Islamabad to evolve a consensus on Memorandum of Financial Policies (MEFP) for striking a staff-level agreement. It is understood that in case the IMF mission paid a visit and the talks remained inconclusive, it would cause more damage to the vulnerable economy. This time, the IMF high-ups again pressed upon this point of view and asked for making renewed efforts to strike a staff-level agreement through virtual meetings. “We might start our talks from coming Monday, so that both sides can evolve a consensus on the MEFP document,” said the official.
