A local newspaper has claimed that the IMF has expressed serious concerns as to why Pakistan failed to operationalise the Treasury Single Account (TSA 1).
ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-Oct 25th, 2021) The International Monetary Fund (IMF) asked Pakistan to deposit Rs 2,900 billion into federal consolidated fund.
The IMF expressed serious concerns as to why Pakistan failed to operationalise the Treasury Single Account (TSA 1).
Pakistan was required to close down the accounts of the federal and provincial governments into private commercial banks with whopping deposits of Rs 2,900 billion.
According to the reports, the IMF had hinted at bringing attached autonomous bodies and entities, including those belonging to the Ministry of Defense and the armed forces, as part of the structural benchmark of $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF). The reports said that Pakistan had already agreed to withdraw Rs2,900 billion from commercial banks and shift it into the Federal Consolidated Fund (FCA) known as the account number of the federal government with the State Bank of Pakistan.
The all- powerful ministries including the Ministry of Defense and others, however, had not yet accomplished such assigned tasks within the stipulated time-frame.
IMA went one step ahead to make the TSA-2 as part of structural benchmark under which all attached autonomous departments including those affiliated with the Ministry of Defense and armed forces would also be required to shift their deposits into the federal consolidated fund.
The reports said that the amount of Rs1,665 billion of different federal ministries and divisions were put into commercial banks’ accounts while over Rs1,100 billion of provincial governments is also deposited into private commercial banks.
Now the IMF, under TSA-2, is asking the attached departments of ministries/divisions such as NHA, OGDC, FWO, NLC, SCO and others to follow the same rules and shift their deposits into consolidated accounts.
Commercial banks are earning huge profits on deposited money of Rs2,900 billion of federal and provincial governments as there is spread of 4 to 5% because they were investing into T-bills and charging more from the government, so conservative estimates suggest that the government was losing Rs150 billion on per annum basis because of this mismanagement.
A local newspaper claimed that this is not easy as many ministries and divisions as well as attached departments would not be agree to shift their deposits into the consolidated fund as they wanted to bypass the Ministry of Finance and AGPR when they required funds.
