Pakistan has initiated discussions with the IMF over a new multi-billion dollar loan agreement to support its economic reform program, its new finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb in an interview with foreign media. The South Asian nation is nearing the end of a nine-month, $3 billion loan program with the International Monetary Fund designed to tackle a balance-of- payments crisis which brought it to the brink of default last summer. With the final $1.1 billion tranche of that deal likely to be approved later this month, Pakistan has begun negotiations for a new multi-year IMF loan program worth “billions” of dollars, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said during an interview in Washington.

“The market confidence, the market sentiment is in much, much better shape this fiscal year,” said Aurangzeb, a former banker who took up his post last month. “It’s really for that purpose that, during the course of this week, we have initiated the discussion with the Fund to get into a larger and an extended program,” he added Aurangzeb said there was an "very good opportunity" for Pakistan to play a similar role in the trade war as countries like Vietnam, which has been able to dramatically boost its exports to the US following the imposition of tariffs on some Chinese goods. "We have already a few examples of that already working," he said. "But what we need to do is to really scale it up." As part of the structural reform program agreed to by the previous government, Pakistan is in the middle of a privatization drive to sell off its poorly- performing state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

The first SOE on the list is Pakistan International Airlines, the country's flag carrier. "We will get to know in the next month or so with respect to interest from prospective bidders," Aurangzeb said. "Our desire is to go through with that privatization and take it through the finishing line by the end of June," he added. If the PIA privatization goes well for the government, other companies could soon follow. "We're creating an entire pipeline," he said, adding: "Over the next couple of years we want to really accelerate that."

Credit: Independent News Pakistan