It took a while for Prime Minister Imran Khan to realise that there's no escaping the IMF. But can he use the programme to turn Pakistan's economy around?
After months of back and forth talks, Pakistan has finally secured a badly needed $6 billion ‘bailout’ loan from the International Monetary Fund .
In sweeping changes to his cabinet last month, Khan removed finance minister Asad Umar, a close aide, and replaced him with a technocrat Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. But Saad Bin Ahmed, head of equities, at a Karachi-based brokerage house, says the deal helps restore the confidence of foreign investors, which is more important than the actual amount to be received from the fund.
Shaikh, the finance advisor, had taken Pakistan through its most successful privatisation period in the early 2000s when he was responsible for divesting government's stake in state-owned companies. One area where the IMF has put a lot of focus is tax collection. Pakistan has for years struggled to raise its tax revenue and bring more people and organisations under the tax net.
The deficit in the second half of last year was around $7 billion, which the government bridged by borrowing from local banks and friendly countries such as Saudi Arabia and China.
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