It turns out that the IMF\u2019s account of the state of the economy, and also of the just-resumed EFF (Extended Fund Facility), is pretty different from the government\u2019s version. And some of the things that Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said, like he actually got the Fund to back down from some of its stiff demands about more income tax, power tariffs, etc, were just not true. Or that the prior conditions were targeted only at the super-rich. In its report released on Friday the Fund announced six more conditions for Pakistan, which include increasing individual income tax rates as well as power tariffs; something which the government must have known when the finance minister was making misleading statements.
\nIt\u2019s also true, as feared often in this space, that IMF is very unhappy with the present fiscal year\u2019s budget because it clearly \u201cdeparted from EFF objectives and contributed to rapidly increasing macroeconomic vulnerabilities\u201d. Back then, when the new finance minister presented his first budget, he assured the nation that the sudden turn to expansionary fiscal policy would not be reversed and there would be no need for a mini-budget because he\u2019d \u201cmake the IMF understand the government\u2019s point of view\u201d. Since none of that turned out to be true, and the economy is in for further tightening of fiscal policy at a time when jobs and incomes are low and prices are very high, the new finance team\u2019s policies don\u2019t exactly seem to be working out quite as expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It turns out that the IMF\u2019s account of the state of the economy, and also of the just-resumed EFF (Extended Fund Facility), is pretty different from the government\u2019s version. And some of the things that Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said, like he actually got the Fund to back down from some of its stiff demands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[3809,3810],"class_list":{"0":"post-242946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-editorial","7":"tag-bag","8":"tag-cat"},"yoast_head":"\n