Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb held an opening meeting with an International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation on Tuesday as formal discussions began for the fourth review of Pakistan’s $7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and the third review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
The IMF mission is being led by Iva Petrova and is currently in Islamabad for discussions with Pakistani authorities. The Finance Ministry said the meeting focused on preliminary issues linked to both ongoing programme reviews.
Successful completion of the reviews could lead to an IMF Executive Board recommendation for the release of around $1.2 billion through two tranches under the EFF and RSF programmes.
Pakistan received $1.32 billion from the IMF in May after the Fund’s Executive Board completed the third EFF review. The country’s 37-month EFF programme was approved in September 2024.
The programme is aimed at strengthening economic stability, rebuilding foreign exchange reserves and expanding the country’s tax base. It also focuses on policies intended to support sustainable economic growth.
The IMF delegation had spent the previous week in Karachi, where it held discussions with senior State Bank of Pakistan officials on monetary policy, inflation and exchange-rate issues.
After moving to Islamabad, the mission was briefed on the government’s digital Asset Declaration Scheme. Under the scheme, around 10,000 federal government employees are required to submit their asset declarations by October 30.
Officials from the Establishment Division and the Federal Board of Revenue briefed the IMF on the digitisation process under Section 15-A of the Civil Servants Act, 1973.
The asset declarations will be mandatory for the affected federal civil servants. The government plans to publish the digitised declarations by December 2026 or January 2027. Provincial government employees are not currently included in the scheme.
Revenue collection is also expected to remain a key issue during the IMF review. FBR officials briefed the mission on the government’s projected tax collection for the first quarter of the current fiscal year.
Officials said disruptions linked to the Strait of Hormuz and higher fuel prices had affected economic activity in Pakistan. The slowdown was also cited as a factor behind weaker sales tax and income tax collection.
According to preliminary FBR estimates, the ongoing regional conflict has resulted in revenue losses of around Rs144 billion.
Despite these challenges, tax authorities said they expected to meet the first-quarter revenue collection target of Rs3.053 trillion by September 30.
