Key Takeaways
- IMF mission led by Iva Petrova will visit Pakistan on September 23.
- Review will cover $7 billion EFF and $1.4 billion RSF for the period ending June 30, 2026.
- Focus on policy implementation, revenue collection, and economic governance reforms.
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission, led by Iva Petrova, is scheduled to visit Pakistan on September 23 for a biannual review of the country’s economic performance and implementation of the $7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and the $1.4 billion Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
The mission, which will last almost two weeks until the first week of October, will conduct technical discussions at the State Bank of Pakistan and meet with government sectoral teams, including a customary inaugural meeting with Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb.
The review will examine policy implementation at the start of the fiscal year, particularly the Federal Board of Revenue’s (FBR) ability to meet its first-ever half-yearly revenue collection structural benchmark under an IMF programme, given the revenue machinery’s repeated large annual shortfalls.
This review will also assess the performance of the provincial governments, which have surrendered more than Rs1.035 trillion of their National Finance Commission (NFC) shares to the Centre for national security and water resources, on top of the Rs1.8 trillion cash surplus committed under IMF pressure.
The programme’s performance against fiscal targets as of end-June 2026 has mostly been on track, but there have been significant revenue shortfalls and slippages in the policy matrix, including the government’s intervention in commodity operations, particularly wheat and sugar, in violation of an IMF condition.
The review will also focus on economic governance reforms, with official reports suggesting that only a couple of targets out of more than 30 set by the prime minister for improving economic governance during the January-June 2026 period had been met.
These targets were set after the IMF’s governance and corruption diagnostic assessment found serious shortcomings in efforts to combat corruption. While the government had introduced reforms to ensure transparent procurement processes in state-owned entities (SOEs), direct contracting with SOEs without open competitive bidding continued unabated.
There were also reports of agencies issuing tenders after projects had been completed through preferred contractors, compromising competitive pricing and transparency. The rules aimed at ending such preferential treatment have yet to be passed.
Upon successful completion of the review, Pakistan will be eligible for the disbursement of about $1 billion (760 million Special Drawing Rights) under the EFF and another $200 million under the RSF by the end of November or early December.
