IMF to assess flood impact in next review: Azour

October 14, 2022 (MLN): The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be fielding a mission in November after the annual meetings to Pakistan to start with the authorities preparing for the next review and are waiting for assessment of damages that World Bank and UNDP are conducting in order to see what are on one hand the repercussions on public finance and the impact on the economy and on the society, said Director of Middle East and Central Asia Department Jihad Azour while speakin to journalists on Friday.

Based on this assessment, we will need to update our numbers and based on our discussion with the authorities, we will also listen to them to see what their priorities are, and how the Fund can help.

“We were saddened by the loss of human as well as also livelihood in Pakistan with the flood and we presented, and we reiterate our condolences for the people of Pakistan. As you know, the Fund has been very supportive to Pakistan over the last period,” he added.

He said that we have a program with Pakistan that has been extended and increased in size. This is to help Pakistan deal with the confluence of shocks starting with the Covid crisis where we provided additional flexibility.

We accelerated some of our disbursement to recently the exogenous shocks and the shock of increase in price of food and commodity. We had recently completed a review that provided Pakistan with $1.2 billion.

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