The overarching economic strategy of the incumbent government is not quite focused on achieving macroeconomic stability, though that is certainly a stated objective, or to implement pro-growth policies — pledged repeatedly by senior members of the cabinet but derailed due to the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme’s contractionary conditions — but to attract foreign direct investment as the overarching objective that would resolve economic fragility as well as periodic balance of payments issues.

This was baldly stated in paragraph 15 of the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies, an attachment to the Letter of Intent signed off by the Minister for Finance (Muhammad Aurangzeb) and Governor State Bank of Pakistan (Jameel Ahmed) on Pakistan’s behalf, a prerequisite for the programme approval and tranche disbursement by the IMF dated 11 September 2024: “Since attracting high-quality FDI is a key underpinning of our growth strategy, dividends on foreign investments can be repatriated freely, with no preference given to any particular investor or group of investors.

In this regard, banks have already cleared the backlog of pending dividend/profit payments. Going forward, we will collect information from banks at a monthly frequency on the stock of dividend/profit payments pending execution, which have cleared any necessary regulatory processes.

As part of our medium-term agenda, we will continue to upgrade our FX market framework and infrastructure by developing, among others, (i) a revised, more robust, regulatory regime for Exchange Companies; (ii) an FX swap mechanism for Islamic institutions; and (iii) a local USD clearing mechanism.“

Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) was established on 20 June 2023, with the highest representation from the civilian (federal and provincial) and military leadership in the apex committee (chaired by the prime minister and Chief of Army Staff) with sectoral councils set up with relevant representation again from civilian and military leadership.

It was designed to act as a single window to facilitate investors (to provide a single window inexplicably the........

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