The Intern-ational Monetary Fund's first quarterly monitoring and review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme for Pakistan will take place in December. Significant discrepancies have emerged between the claims made in the 2019-20 budget documents on the performance of key macroeconomic indicators pertaining to fiscal year 2018-19 - data forming the basic premise of negotiations with the IMF and the resulting approval of the loan effective 1 July - and the data released this week titled Summary of Consolidated Federal and Provincial Budgetary Operations 2018-19. Business Recorder approached the IMF and sought its response on these discrepancies.

Teresa Daban Sanchez, IMF's Resident Representative to Pakistan, responded, "Pakistan's IMF-supported programme will be monitored and reviewed according to a calendar of quarterly reviews. The first one is scheduled to take place at some point in December." On July 3, 2019, the IMF Executive Board approved a 39-month extended arrangement under the EFF for Pakistan for an amount of $6 billion to support the authorities' economic reform programme.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019