The recently released International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s, or simply the ‘Fund’s’) country report, indicated completion of the first review of Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme with Pakistan, and immediately released $1 billion, taking the total disbursement to $2.1 billion.

Overall, the IMF appears comfortable with the country’s performance under the programme, as it points out ‘Pakistan’s policy efforts under the EFF have already delivered significant progress in stabilizing the economy and rebuilding confidence…’

The IMF highlights the concerns facing the progress achieved basically in terms of macroeconomic stability. It points out in this regard, ‘Risks to the outlook remain elevated, however, particularly from global economic policy uncertainty, rising geopolitical tensions, and persistent domestic vulnerabilities.’

In view of these risks, the Fund advises ‘Against this backdrop, the authorities need to maintain sound macroeconomic policies and accelerate reforms to safeguard the macroeconomic gains and underpin stronger and sustainable, private sector-led medium-term growth.’

There are two ways to approach IMF’s conclusions above, whereby basically through adopting monetary-, and fiscal austerity-based EFF programme the country has achieved reasonable level of macroeconomic stability, and it is important that bring sustainability to this stability, and to build economic growth in parallel, it should focus on strong structural reforms, primarily to enhance productivity, competitiveness, resilience – which the author will discuss in subsequent paragraphs, while discussing the other negotiated programme with IMF in the shape of Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) –and revenue collection, and to reduce energy related costs.

Moreover, to........

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