ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has set a challenging tax revenue target of 13 trillion rupees ($46.66 billion) for the year starting July 1, a near 40 percent jump from the current year, to strengthen the case for a new bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund.
The ambitious revenue targets for the fiscal year through June 2025 were in line with analyst expectations.
Key objectives for the upcoming fiscal year included bringing the public debt-to-GDP ratio to sustainable levels and prioritising improvements in the balance of payments position, the government’s budget document showed.
Pakistan has projected a sharp drop in its fiscal deficit for the new financial year at 5.9 percent of GDP, from an upwardly revised estimate of 7.4 percent for the current year.
GDP would expand 2.4 percent in the current year, missing the budgeted target of 3.5 percent, the government said in its economic review on Tuesday, despite revenues being up 30 percent on the year, and the fiscal and current account deficits being under control.
Pakistan will look to widen the tax base to avoid burdening existing tax payers to meet its targets, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said while presenting the budget.
While Pakistan is expected to stick to fiscal prudence under a new IMF program, growth will stay constrained, said Abid Suleri of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute think tank.
“Many of the measures taken to achieve fiscal sustainability will impact growth negatively, at least in the near future,” he said.
Pakistan is in talks with the IMF for a loan of about $6 billion to $8 billion, as it seeks to avert a default for an economy growing at the slowest pace in the region.
But a recent economic uptick, falling inflation and an interest rate cut on Monday have stirred government optimism over the prospects for growth.
The key policy rate could fall further this year and economic growth would continue to rise, Aurangzeb had told reporters a day before presenting his first budget.

KARACHI: Pakistan is unlikely to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargoes on the spot market until at least the beginning of winter in November due to oversupply and high prices, its petroleum minister told Reuters.

Extreme temperatures across Asia have pushed countries to seek more cargoes of LNG to address higher power demand, driving spot prices to their highest since mid-December. Asia spot LNG last traded at $12.00 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on Friday.

However, LNG demand in the second largest South Asian LNG buyer was “subordinate to supplies,” the minister told Reuters, despite heatwaves baking the country of 300 million people with temperatures surging to a near-record.

“The question of getting more LNG when we can’t sell the amount of LNG that we already are obtaining from our long-term contracts, it does not apply,” Musadik Masood Malik, Pakistan’s petroleum minister, told Reuters in an interview.

Annual power use in Pakistan, which gets over a third of its electricity from natural gas, is expected to fall consecutively for the first time in 16 years, due to higher tariffs curbing household consumption.

Poor and middle-class households are still feeling the impact of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) bailout of Pakistan last year, which contributed to higher retail prices. A series of power tariff hikes over 12 months was a key part of the IMF program which ended in April.

Industrial demand has also remained tepid due to a cloudy economic outlook.

Pakistan, which last bought a spot LNG cargo in late 2023, canceled its spot LNG tender for delivery in January. Malik attributed the cancelation to oversupply, adding that there were “not a lot of customers” at current LNG spot prices.

Malik said Pakistan was keen to adopt more renewable energy to cut its import bill and exposure to geopolitical shocks. The country suffered widespread power outages due to its inability to buy expensive LNG after prices surged due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Any country that is importing $15-18 billion of fuel, how can it be sustainable when the total exports are south of $30 billion? So we have to move away from the imported elements such as LNG,” he said.

Pakistan was also trying to access less expensive natural gas by building a pipeline with Iran, but was wary of sanctions, he said.

“We basically are trying to work out the solution whereby we can have access to less expensive gas, but in a manner which does not invoke any sanctions on Pakistan. It all depends on legal interpretations,” he said.

“From our perspective, we don’t want to get into litigation and we don’t want to get sanctioned.”