The Finance Ministry expects a breakthrough in talks between Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Dubai for the issuance of $100 million installment, hoping that the money will soon be delivered to Islamabad. According to newspaper reports, the talks are going to be held in November 7 in the backdrop of $6.64 billion assistance programme for Pakistan. The government has already discussed in detail the three conditions laid down by the donor agency for the issuance of the loan.
On another note, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar says that the Pakistani negotiating team is leaving for Dubai to discuss fifth and sixth installments for the loan amounting to $1.1 billion. The Finance Ministry claims that it is fully prepared to remove all the possible bottlenecks which would come in the way of the issuance of the loan. The first point that the IMF could raise is its reservations on the opposition’s objections to the privatisation of the Oil and Gas Development Company as the government is going to offer 7.5 percent shares to the private investors. To meet another IMF condition, the government has tactfully withdrawn subsidy on electricity amounting to Rs 27 billion. According to Customs Today report, the Ministry of Water and Power has incorporated a surcharge of Rs1.50 per unit in electricity bills to cut the subsidy. Besides, the government has imposed Re 0.30 per unit circular debt tax and Rs 1.05 electricity equalisation surcharge and the IMF officials will be apprised of the government steps in the talks. The surcharge has been enforced with effect from October 1 and it will continue to burden the electricity consumers until July 31, 2015.
The point to ponder is that the government is spending millions of rupees on visits and discussions to get the IMF loans without blocking the loopholes in the administrative system through which billions of dollars hard-earned money is siphoned off every year. The official machinery should have noted that five or six billion dollars is not a big amount to become a debt servitude.Instead, a drastic cleansing drive is indispensable to purge the government departments of black sheep.
Building a Southwest Pacific regional organization
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