Pak position unchanged on IMF package, says Asad

[ahlam1399]

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Asad Umar said Monday that while Pakistan’s position remained unchanged, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had shifted its stance to the outstanding issues, raising hope for an early package.Replying to questions here at the Prime Minister Office, the minister said IMF had changed its position and a considerable gap had been now narrowed down after they watched the government taking extremely difficult decisions.He pointed out that the situation, which this government inherited, was unprecedented, as compared to 2008-2013 and when the PTI formed government, the foreign exchange reserves were depleted to imports for 15 days and this was never witnessed in the past.However, he noted that there had been improvement owing to the government measures and the IMF acknowledged these measures, which saw a significant reduction in current account deficit, as compared to the last year.Prime Minister Imran Khan had specially summoned the finance minister as well as Chairman Energy Task Force Nadeem Babar to respond to questions from media on economy and energy-related issues while he spoke generally on other matters.Asad Umar said the IMF’s view was that the economic challenges that the PTI government was confronted with after coming into power were far worse than the situation in 2008 and 2013 when Pakistan had signed programmes. He emphasised that Pakistan was not required to take drastic measures as those already taken in past few months were enough to restore macroeconomic stability. However, the minister did not rule out some additional measures including currency devaluation.The minister said, “There is was a possibility that Pakistan and the IMF may sign a deal at the end of IMF staff level mission that will arrive in Pakistan in the third week of April and the discussions will also take place next month In Washington”.Asad Umar made it clear that the government could not end all the losses in the energy sector at once and it would gradually be doing away with subsidies. He pointed out that overvaluation of the rupee massively damaged the economy. The minister noted that the exchange rate was linked with economic fundamentals and as long as there was current account deficit the rupee would keep on shedding its value. Imran Khan said reduction in the public debt as a barometer to gauge the success of his government and added if the PTI government managed to reduce the public debt to Rs20 trillion from the current Rs30 trillion, then it will mean we were successful and if the public debt crossed over Rs30 trillion, then it will mean we have failed. The prime minister called on the nation to pray, as there was a hope of discovery of large off-shore oil and gas reserves.Nadeem Babar said that the government would issue new exploration licenses for 30 blocks to find gas. He said that the onshore drilling by two companies was affected due to the security situation. He said that there was possibility that this could be largest hydro carbon discovery in Asia.On the energy situation, he pointed out that there were serious issues of demand and gas supply due to Article 158 of the Constitution, as Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan had priority right on domestic gas, which had created the pricing issue due to expensive LNG imports.On its part, the PML-N government in its tenure ignored the power transmission and distribution networks, as their focus remained on power generation.He said the electricity prices for next two years could go up due to passing on the impact of Rs226 billion investment in the power generation and Rs170 billion idle capacity payments of the past years. He explained this would have resulted in Rs4.50 per unit increase but Prime Minister Imran Khan refused to do it in one go.Baber said that the last PML-N government did not fully fund electricity subsidies that led to non-payment of Rs157 billion subsidies by the Finance Ministry and in future, the subsidies would be fully reflected in the budget. He said that the PTI government was working on reduction of distribution losses, hoping to achieve Nepra’s benchmarks by June 2020.At this point Asad Umar asked a question from former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, as to whether there was some national security issue involved, which barred them from issuing exploration licenses.http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/com/cwEr/~4/CsWNdDbmOqA

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