The latest reports say that the both sides could not reach any consensus over fiscal deficit as of now as the government officials failed last time to convince the IMF over their point of view.
ISLAMABAD: (UrduPoint/Pakistan Point News-Feb 6th, 2023) Pakistan and International Monetary Fund (IMF) will hold technical level talks today in Islamabad.
The both sides could not reach any consensus over fiscal deficit as of now as the government officials have failed to convince the IMF over their point of view.
The sources said that the both sides would hold their policy talks on Tuesday (tomorrow)
They said that “The policy talks now expected to begin on February 07 instead of 06,”.
In the four-day technical talks, the Federal government and the IMF mission held discussions to reduce the budget deficit. Different plans were discussed to reduce the burden of external debt payments.
Sources said that the government presented a plan to reduce Rs611 billion in budgetary expenditures. Moreover, the government also agreed on limiting the subsidies to up to Rs340 billion.
The details of the mini budget also came into discussion.
The IMF demanded to increase the sales tax rate from 17% to 18%.
They also deliberated on ending discounted sales tax rates for different sectors.
It was learnt that the authorities will end discounted sales tax worth Rs110 billion for the different sectors, moreover, the government also mulled over introducing a new clause in the mini budget for the imposition of flood levy.
IMF officials said that the tax revenue of Pakistan will likely remain 840 billion rupees down, while the Pakistani delegation keeps the figure down by 450 bln rupees.
They said that Pakistan’s economic team have to convince with the IMF delegation with regard to the economic data in a meeting today.
Pakistan, they said, left no option other than hiking the prices of petrol, diesel, electricity and gas, adding that the final decision for the toughest decisions would be taken by the prime minister.
The federal government is likely to take the other political parties into confidence regarding the tough economic decisions in the upcoming all-parties conference.
