ISLAMABAD: Pakistan hopes that a $6 billion IMF loan package it is currently availing will be its last, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said in an interview published on Friday, adding that the government planned to boost spending on large infrastructure projects by up to 40 percent to create jobs and foster productivity in a pandemic-hit economy.

Earlier this week, Tarin denied the country was opting out of an International Monetary Fund 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.

“All we are saying is that we are just basically going to give them alternate ways of achieving the same objective” including revenue generation and reducing energy debt, Tarin said in an interview with Bloomberg, adding that the aim was for this to be the last IMF bailout in Pakistan’s history.

While balancing the budget will be key for Pakistan’s current loan program with the IMF, the new finance minister is negotiating with the organization for more wriggle room to support economic growth, Bloomberg said.

The government’s GDP target for next year is a percentage point higher than the IMF’s 4 percent projection, and Tarin seeks to boost growth to 6 percent in the year after, he said. The Washington-based lender sees the economy expanding 1.5 percent in the current fiscal period after a rare contraction last year.

The federal government will earmark as much as 900 billion rupees ($6 billion) for development expenditure in the year beginning July, Tarin, who took office last month, said in an interview with Bloomberg in Islamabad. The economy needs to expand by 5 percent next year, he said.

“That’s the bare minimum we need for a country this size,” Tarin, who is due to present a new budget next month for the world’s fifth most-populous nation, said. “There are almost 110 million youth.”

“Tarin’s plan will reverse his predecessor’s decision to lower spending to narrow the budget deficit, which he estimates to be a little above 7 percent of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year through June, against 8.1 percent in the previous year,” Bloomberg reported. “Tarin said he expects the deficit in the next fiscal to be 1 or 1.5 percentage points lower.”

“We need 2 million jobs every year,” he said. “If we do not go into growth mode, we will have a major crisis on the streets.”

The central bank, which has cut interest rates to a three-year low to support the economy, has been on pause mode for a while and has left some of the heavy lifting to the government.

“First we have to get more revenues,” Tarin said, adding that he’s targeting about 6 trillion rupees next year in tax authority revenue, compared with this year’s 4.75 trillion-rupee target.