Halaat kb behtar honge? Finance Minister gives timeline for structural reforms

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb spoke at the US think tank Atlantic Council in Washington DC, stating that Pakistan needs two or three years to implement structural reforms prescribed by International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The minister remarked that Pakistan does not need any more policy prescription from the IMF because it knows what it needs to do in terms of reforms.

“We have known the what and why not for years but for decades. […] It’s time for us to actually start moving the execution of these aspects and why we’re looking for a larger and extended program, so once we get into the execution we will need a two to three-year time period to go through the structural reforms,” said Aurangzeb, previously the head of Pakistan’s largest bank.

The minister also remarked that if Pakistan failed to implement reforms, then it would be looking at another IMF program later.

The Finance czar was of the opinion that Pakistan entered 2024 in a much better economic shape and credited the nine-month Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) programme.

He also emphasized that needs to bring the under-taxed and untaxed sectors into the national tax net and also said that taxation process needed reforms.