Islamabad - Pakistan in June will get the next instalment worth $506 million of its loan from the International Monetary Fund after a successful review of its economic performance, the finance minister said Monday.
"The seventh review was completed successfully today, for which an IMF team came to Islamabad," Ishaq Dar told a joint press conference with IMF delegation head Harald Finger.
"After the approval from the IMF board, some 506 million dollars should be released to Pakistan in June," Dar said.
Dar said the country had satisfied qualitative performance criteria relating to its net international assets, net domestic assets and borrowing by the Central Bank.
"All these three were right on target."
The minister said Pakistan would achieve the fiscal deficit target of 4.9 percent of GDP by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, and for next year the target would be 4.3 percent.
Finger said Pakistan had made "significant progress" over the last year and a half in strengthening its economy.
He said the IMF mission and Pakistani authorities had reached staff-level agreement on economic and financial policies which would be considered by the IMF executive board in June.
"After completion of this review, SDR 360 million (about $506 million) will be made available to Pakistan," Finger announced.
The IMF official said the economy was improving.
AFP
