(Misbah Latif)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ISLAMABAD: State Minister for Finance and Revenue Dr Aisha Ghaus Pasha said Monday the federal government had no intention of freezing foreign currency accounts despite the nation facing a severe dollar crunch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We do not plan on freezing foreign currency accounts and there have been no proposals to take such an action,” the state minister told journalists outside the parliament in Islamabad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In May 1998, the then-government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif froze all currency accounts after the country’s first nuclear tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pakistan’s foreign reserves today, standing at rock bottom, cover less than a month’s imports as the economy creaks under twin deficits and record-high inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The risk of default remains high, and the struggling nation remains in a deadlock with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a much-needed bailout programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minister said the government had shared the fiscal year 2023-24 budget numbers with the lender, and the IMF is still negotiating with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar unveiled a Rs14.5 trillion (around $50.5 billion) budget last Friday, with over half set aside to service 7.3 trillion rupees of debt, and experts believe it would not help the government’s case mich in unlocking the loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have told IMF to conclude the ninth review at the earliest. We have less time and a lot of tension for completing the ninth review,” the state minister noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minister said the Fund will not have any issues with the budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pasha said IMF MD Kristalina Georgieva had assured the Pakistani authorities that her organisation would complete the latest review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“All our friendly countries have also given their assurances to the IMF.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Misbah Latif) ISLAMABAD: State Minister for Finance and Revenue Dr Aisha Ghaus Pasha said Monday the federal government…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_appearance_grid":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,76,71],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"category-important-news","9":"category-latest-news","10":"cs-entry","11":"cs-video-wrap"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21483,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481\/revisions\/21483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/undergroundnews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}