- IMF team to visit Pakistan from February 25.
- Primary fiscal surplus hits 1.3% of GDP: Kozack.
- “Governance report proposes tax, transparency reforms.”
The International Monetary Fund on Friday welcomed reform progress by Pakistan, saying its policy efforts under the IMF-supported programme have helped stabilise the economy and rebuild market confidence.
According to IMF spokesperson and Director of Communications Julie Kozack, Pakistan is currently implementing an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement and an IMF staff team is expected to visit the country starting February 25 for discussions on the third review under the EFF and the second review under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
Kozack said Pakistan’s policy efforts under the EFF have contributed to macroeconomic stabilisation and a gradual restoration of confidence.
She added that fiscal performance has remained strong, with Pakistan posting a primary fiscal surplus of 1.3% of gross domestic product in fiscal year 2025, in line with programme targets.
Headline inflation, she also said, has remained relatively contained, while Pakistan recorded its first current account surplus in 14 years during fiscal year 2025.
The official of the Washington-based lender further said that the Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Report has recently been published, outlining a range of reform proposals, including simplifying tax policy design, levelling the playing field in public procurement, and improving transparency in asset declarations.
Last year in December, the IMF Executive Board approved a $1.2 billion loan for Pakistan after completing the second review of the country’s economic reform programme under EFF.
Ahead of the upcoming mission, Pakistan has drawn up a 15-point action plan in response to the Governance and Diagnostic Assessment Report (GCD), including a move to identify the top 10 high-risk federal agencies with corruption vulnerabilities and macro-critical exposures, The News reported.
The plan also sets out steps to reduce the backlog of economic disputes, including developing and publishing a methodology to assess the performance of courts and judges in Year 1, and issuing the first performance report covering all administrative tribunals and special courts dealing with economic and commercial matters in Year 2.
A detailed action plan comprising 240 pages prepared by the Government of Pakistan for placing an action plan to combat corruption and enhancing institutional strengths to combat corruption and improve governance states that based on the diagnostic report findings and reform options presented, comprehensive performance assessment criteria and framework for evaluating court and judicial governance and performance including diversionary/Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms will be devised with analytic and predictive capacities to implement active case management.
The working group will conduct Legislative Review of Anti Money Laundering (AML) Authority 2010 to remove ambiguities. The AML/CFT Authority will establish a Joint Working Group, comprising relevant stakeholders, to undertake a legislative review of the Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA), 2010. The purpose of this review is to eliminate any ambiguity on whether a predicate offence conviction is required in order to prosecute money laundering.
The Joint Working Group (JWG) will also review AMLA, 2010 to identify other amendments, e.g. in the areas of definitional clarity, clarification of processes and procedure, and investigative powers, etc, needed to strengthen ML investigations and prosecutions under AMLA, 2010. The amendments in AMLA 2010 will be placed before parliament and subsequently notified and disseminated for implementation by June 2027.
The NAB will draft a national risk assessment on corruption, and to achieve multiagency inputs, bring it to the National Anti-Corruption Task Force (chaired by AMLA and including NAB, FIA, AGP, ACEs, SECP, FBR, CGA, PBS, and others coopted by the task force as technical contributors).
The task force will be established under the umbrella of AML/CFT Authority, as the overarching coordinating body for all “competent authorities”, (as per Section 6 (1) of National AML/CFT Authority in Pakistan Act 2023), eg NAB, FIA and all anticorruption establishments ACEs and other relevant agencies, to finalise a centralised Corruption Risk Assessment Framework for assessing the corruption vulnerabilities in various organisations.
