Dar departs for US for annual meetings of IMF, World Bank

On Tuesday, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar left for a visit to the United States, the finance ministry said. During his visit, the minister will attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He is also expected to hold direct talks with their officials.

A day earlier, Dar reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to complete the IMF program with all its conditions in an honorable manner and meet all repayment obligations to multilateral, bondholders and Paris Club creditors.

He said the ninth review with the IMF was scheduled for October 25 and ruled out any consideration for renegotiating the IMF agreement when it was in the last leg of its completion.

He also shared that Pakistan was seeking rescheduling of bilateral debt, which now stands at around $27 billion. However, he ruled out the rescheduling of international debt from wealthy western nations under Paris Club, multilateral and international sovereign bonds.

The minister said there was no point in Paris Club rescheduling debt because the overall debt to these creditors was no more than 11 percent of total foreign debt and debt relief over the year would be less than $1.2bn. Pakistan owes Paris Club countries a combined sum of around $10.7bn.

“When we are going to arrange $32-34bn for external payments, another $1.2bn is no big issue,” Dar said.

The finance minister’s visit comes as Pakistan deals with the aftermath of the devastating floods which have affected nearly 33 million people and displaced 7.9m.

The World Bank has forecast Pakistan’s economic growth rate at 2pc this year and warned that 2.5 to 4pc of the population or about 10m people could fall below the poverty line owing to the combined impact of devastating floods and historic inflation.