Pakistan says it agrees to IMF terms on release of $1.1bn payout
Al JazeeraDec 01, 2022
The Facts
On Friday, Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reached a staff-level agreement on a nine-month $3B stand-by arrangement expected to be approved by the IMF's executive board by mid-July.
The deal — which comes on the day the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) was scheduled to expire — is expected to help Pakistan, which is battling an acute balance of payments crisis and falling foreign exchange reserves.
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
Though Pakistan wasted nine months trying to find an alternative to a previously agreed bailout deal, this new stand-by agreement has given the country a second chance to complete a job that should have already been done. This is just the first step to resolving the crisis, but it's vital to prevent a tragic default in the run-up to national elections by unlocking inflows from bilateral and multilateral partners.
Establishment-critical narrative
There's plenty of evidence that the Western liberal capitalist order is crumbling, but the Pakistani political elite has decided to bow to the IMF's diktats of austerity as if there was no way out of this crisis other than a bailout that undermines the nation's sovereignty. No matter how painful it could be, Islamabad should have followed the Chinese example to revamp its economy on a truly sustainable path.