Pakistan plans to introduce new taxes and increase revenue by 215 billion rupees (about 700 million euros) to 9.4 trillion rupees after three consecutive days of talks with the IMF, Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq has reported Dar, and it has been picked up by the Bloomberg agency.
Earlier this month, the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif presented the annual spending plan that was intended to balance boosting economic growth with austere conditions imposed by the IMF to revive a $6.7 billion bailout program. 6,000 million euros). It has decided to review and cut spending by Rs 85 billion, according to the finance minister.
The IMF raised objections to some of the proposals, saying at the time that the fiscal policies in the budget did not broaden the revenue base and that an amnesty went against the “conditionality and governance agenda” of the bailout program.
Sharif met IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva this week and vowed to take further steps with the fund to improve the budget. Pakistan is making a final push to revive its program, Dar has said.
Pakistan now hopes to get at least $1.1 billion of funding from the fund before its current program expires on June 30. In the past year, the government has increased taxes and fuel prices and eased control over the exchange rate.
The nation has raised the fuel tax ceiling to Rs 60 per liter from Rs 50 per liter, a key revenue measure for the IMF, Dar explained. The authorities also lifted import restrictions a day earlier.
The South Asian nation is facing a financial crisis with record inflation, a currency that has weakened 30 % in a year and foreign exchange reserves that have dwindled to just a month’s worth of imports.
Source: dpa
(Reference image source: Abuzar Xheikh, Unsplash)
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