KARACHI: Pakistani Finance minister Shaukat Tarin on Wednesday denied the country was opting out of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program, saying the government had approached the IMF to ask it to ease “tough conditions” on a $6 billion loan.
The International Monetary Fund Executive board approved the three-year loan package for Pakistan in July 2019 to rein in mounting debts and stave off a looming balance of payments crisis, in exchange for tough austerity measures. In March this year, the IMF said after the latest payment, Pakistan had received total disbursements of $2 billion under the Extended Fund Facility.
“If people think we are moving out of the IMF program.. we are not doing this,” newly appointed finance minister Tarin told journalists at a press conference in Islamabad. “We will ask them to give us some space amid the third wave of COVID.”
Tarin said the government had “alternate plans” if the IMF did not respond favorably to the request to relax conditionalities, adding that authorities had held meetings with IMF and World Bank officials on the current state of the economy, and they had been “very sympathetic to our point of view.”
Tarin said the IMF was asking Pakistan to increase power tariffs and impose incremental taxes, which it did not have the “capacity” to do “because our common man is fed up of inflation, which has cascading effects.”
“Tariff increase is not the only way to increase money,” Tarin said. “Prime Minister Imran Khan is not willing to do that.”
Tarin said IMF and World Bank officials had been briefed that revenue generation, which grew by 92 percent prior to the pandemic, had fallen to 57 percent after the outbreak.
The finance minister said the government had alternative plans to bring circular debt in check and stabilize the energy market.
“All their [IMF] interest is that our circular debt is growing, that should be ceased and some stability should be brought in. We will prove to them that the measures we will take will do it.. that will happen,” Train said.
About taxes, the finance minister said the government wanted to enlarge the revenue envelope through innovative means but gradually.
“As they [IMF] said in 2019 to raise [tax collection] directly from Rs 3.8 trillion to Rs 5.5 trillion, that will not happen,” he said, adding: “This is wrong way of doing – we have to increase gradually and in next 7-8 years we will be at the 20 percent … Will bring revenue collection close to their target but not the way they are saying, by ending exemptions etc.”
Pakistan says not opting out of IMF program but won’t raise power tariffs, taxes
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Pakistan says not opting out of IMF program but won’t raise power tariffs, taxes
- Finance minister Tarin said government had approached IMF to ask for more “space” to meet conditionalities on a $6 bln loan
- Says the government has “alternate plans” if the IMF did not respond favorably to the request to relax conditions
No casualties as blast derails Jaffar Express train in Pakistan’s south
- Passengers were stranded and railway staffers were clearing the track after blast, official says
- In March 2025, separatist militants hijacked the same train with hundreds of passengers aboard
QUETTA: A blast hit Jaffar Express and derailed four carriages of the passenger train in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday, officials said, with no casualties reported.
The blast occurred at the Abad railway station when the Peshawar-bound train was on its way to Sindh’s Sukkur city from Quetta, according to Pakistan Railways’ Quetta Division controller Muhammad Kashif.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, but passenger trains have often been targeted by Baloch separatist outfits in the restive Balochistan province that borders Sindh.
“Four bogies of the train were derailed due to the intensity of the explosion,” Kashif told Arab News. “No casualty was reported in the latest attack on passenger train.”
Another railway employee, who was aboard the train and requested anonymity, said the train was heading toward Sukkur from Jacobabad when they heard the powerful explosion, which derailed power van among four bogies.
“A small piece of the railway track has been destroyed,” he said, adding that passengers were now standing outside the train and railway staffers were busy clearing the track.
In March last year, fighters belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) separatist group had stormed Jaffar Express with hundreds of passengers on board and took them hostage. The military had rescued them after an hours-long operation that left 33 militants, 23 soldiers, three railway staff and five passengers dead.
The passenger train, which runs between Balochistan’s provincial capital of Quetta and Peshawar in the country’s northwest, had been targeted in at least four bomb attacks last year since the March hijacking, according to an Arab News tally.
Pakistan Railways says it has beefed up security arrangements for passenger trains in the province and increased the number of paramilitary troops on Jaffar Express since the hijacking in March, but militants have continued to target them in the restive region.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s southwestern province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, is the site of a decades-long insurgency waged by Baloch separatist groups who often attack security forces and foreigners, and kidnap government officials.
The separatists accuse the central government of stealing the region’s resources to fund development elsewhere in the country. The Pakistani government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan.
