Pakistan’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme with International Monetary Fund (IMF), which as per one of its benchmarks also forms the basis of the upcoming federal budget, suffers serious flaws in terms of prescribed policy, and objectives.

Together with the other recently negotiated Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) programme, the EFF programme targets putting the country on a sustainable macroeconomic, economic growth, and green economy-based resilience against climate change and ‘Pandemicene’ phenomenon path.

The problem is that for achieving these three objectives, it prescribes neoliberal and over-board monetary and fiscal austerity policies, which during the last four decades or so, have not only proved to be counter-productive to achieving the goals that have been stated above, but have also increased income inequality, and poverty, and diminished political voice, and overall weakened the quality of democracy.

Moreover, as indicated, the upcoming federal budget, and provincial economic policies and budgets under the overall ‘National Fiscal Pact’ all need to continue to get aligned with these policy prescriptions under the EFF programme.

While analysing the recently released ‘IMF Country Report No. 25/109’ there are a number of policy prescriptions that need to be pointed out to highlight the alignment of policies with neoliberal, over-board austerity framework, and how they are counter-productive to achieving the much-needed stated goals, especially in a world strongly punctuated by polycrisis, in particular the fast-unfolding climate change crisis, and the likely, and related ‘Pandemicene’ phenomenon.

To start with, serious ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, Ukraine-Russia conflict, and heightened tensions between two nuclear-armed countries Pakistan and India, and the fast-increasing global warming, and likely risks of another pandemic are significant, posing significant downward risks to the EFF programme.

For instance, with regard to global warming, according to the recently released ‘WMO [World Meteorological Organization] global annual to decadal climate update 2025-2029’ report, ‘It is likely (86% chance) that global mean near-surface temperature will exceed 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average levels for at least one year between 2025 and 2029. It is also likely (70% chance) that the 2025-2029 five-year mean will exceed 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.’

Moreover, while global warming at the back of fast-unfolding climate change crisis continues to increase, with it the probability........

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