Islamabad (Web Desk): Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Thursday said that the staff level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would be signed in next few days as all the requirements had already been fulfilled.
“We are very close to signing the agreement with the IMF and it would be done in next few days”, he said while addressing a seminar “Reviving economic stability through strengthening of public financial management” organized by the ministry of finance here.
The minister said that a shattered economy was handed over to the coalition government, however it showed commitment and sincerity to the state by acting upon all the tough conditions made by the previous government with the IMF.
Dar regretted that the petty politics was still being played over Pakistan’s economy by spreading rumors about falling into default which he said was totally a nonsense attitude.
He said the bad economic crisis which the coalition government inherited were even more deeper and complex than that in 2013 and 1990s but with utmost sincerity and prudent policies of the government, the country had come out of quagmire.
“We are now in a position to move forward with full confidence”, he said adding that Pakistan has resilience to meet the challenges as it had huge resources to cope with the problems, but the only thing that had been lacking is lack of consistency in policies and mismanagement in the fiscal sector.
Dar informed that the country’s debt to GDP ratio was improved from 73% to 69% in few years which meant that there was no need to worry about the debts of the country.
He said even the developed countries such as USA and UK had high debt to GDP ratios of over 100%, therefore “We need not to worry about”.
The minister said the country’s foreign exchange reserves got down due to the fact that the government had been only paying back the debts and not getting new debts for last few months.
Ishaq Dar also invited all political parties to sit together for resolving the countries long standing economic issues by setting apart their differences.