• Mission chief sees finalisation of deal in ‘coming days’
• Miftah holds reforms failure responsible for delay

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have made significant progress towards a staff-level agreement (SLA), but have yet to finalise the deal as part of the first review under the 37-month Extended Fund Facility (EFF) worth $7 billion.

“The IMF and the Pakistani authorities made significant progress towards reaching an SLA on the first review under the EFF,” mission chief Nathan Porter said in IMF’s end-of-mission statement released following the conclusion of the first biannual review on Saturday.

An IMF team, led by Mr Porter, visited Islamabad and Kar­achi from Feb 24 to March 14 to hold discussions on the first review of Pakistan’s economic programme supported by the EFF and on a possible new arrangement under the IMF’s Resilience and Sustain­ability Facility........

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