IMF’s SBA approval gives relief to business community: FPCCI

KARACHI: Irfan Iqbal Sheikh, President FPCCI, has apprised that Pakistan’s business, industry and trade community have had a sigh of relief after the approval of IMF’s Standby Agreement (SBA) for a period of 9 months after a long-drawn-out period of economic uncertainty and volatility.

Irfan Iqbal Sheikh hailed efforts of the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mian Shehbaz Sharif; federal minister for finance & revenue, Ishaq Dar and economic team of the government in this regard. Securing IMF programme was indispensable at this critical juncture of country’s economic history and the entire economy was on a standstill due to non-materialization of the same, he added.

He maintained that, despite being tough on business community due to its conditionalities we are welcoming the IMF agreement in the broader national interest as it will put an end to the blockages in the significant other bilateral, multilateral and international institutional sources of external funding.

FPCCI Chief stressed that the government’s economic team now should manage the external account prudentially and proactively – and, avoids any such episodes of delays and procrastination the macroeconomic decision-making.

Irfan Iqbal Shiekh specifically thanked the friendly countries of Saudi Arabia and UAE at this moment for depositing $2 billion and $1 billion respectively to shore up the Foreign Exchange Reserves (FER) of Pakistan with the State Bank of Pakistan and, paving the way for the approval of IMF SBA by its board yesterday.

He added that business community is more concerned with the post-IMF SBA, medium to long-term consistency in economic policies; rather than temporary breather to the economy and its costs to the trade and industry – and, that approach reflects business community’s regard for the national interest and national economy.

He elaborated that important questions here are: (i) how and when the government intends to take business community into confidence on its commitments to IMF and, their macroeconomic policy implications (ii) what’s the plan of action for the much needed economic stabilization (iii) how policy formulation will remain apolitical (iv) how the post-SBA, inevitable and longer-term IMF EFF programme will look like; when we reach that point in Q4FY24, he asked!

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023