Govt to send LOI to IMF, says Finance Minister

August 15, 2022, (MLN): The government of Pakistan is going to send back the letter of intent (LOI) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after making small changes to it, said Finance Minister Miftah Ismail in an interview with a media house.

The IMF set a condition to seek $4bn worth of loans from friendly countries first before the tranche of $1.17bn," he said, adding that the country has successfully managed to get the required loan from some friendly countries.

The finance minister talked about the flaws that we inherited as a nation, we do not stand on the visions which were given by Quaid--e–Azam and Allama Iqbal.
We do not give priority to education, rationality, and population control.

“Today, we say that Pakistani youth has skills and talent and they can compete with Indian youth, however, India in the 1950s was making the Indian Institute of Technology and we were busy in just playing games.”

He mentioned that we should accept the failure even if it's my political party or others, the religious class and the social workers, the nation has failed to protect the minorities.
He said that PTI chanted slogans of real freedom but left behind a trade deficit of $48 billion because of which we didn’t have a choice but to go to the world for loans and funds. Not just PTI every government from Musharraf to PDM we have made the current account deficit so huge that it's difficult to fund them.

Talking about the external imbalances, he said that developing countries should have some current account deficit, which shows that the external investment is coming into your country, but the authentic use of that amount is the way forward. Pakistan needs to be more productive by increasing exports and reducing imports.

While answering the question, the Finance Minister said that he has talked to two Pakistani – American economists; Mr. Asim Khwaja from Harvard University and Mr. Atif Main from Preston University. They suggested that the country needs to bring reforms so that it could give a green signal to the world that it is not always going to be dependent on funds and loans.

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