IMF’s corruption-fight steps: Action plan will be finalised by 31st: Aurangzeb

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Wednesday said the federal government will finalise an action plan by December 31 for the implementation of 15 priority recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to improve governance to end corruption in various departments.

The Finance Minister informed the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance that the short-term and long-term recommendations would be implemented in a two to three-year period to control corruption in government departments.

Terming the report an indictment of both the government and parliament, the Finance Minister read out all 15 major recommendations of the IMF from the report, commenting that most of them are implemented, or a lot of these recommendations are work in progress. Fifteen majorrecommendations of the IMF are related to different areas, including governance, taxation, corruption, regulatory and the rule of law.

Pakistani govt initiated IMF’s governance and corruption report: Aurangzeb

There are seven segments or areas that need to be focused. For example, there are no supplementary grants but only technical grants (re-appropriation of funds) with budget adjustments.

The Civil Services Bill was introduced, and assets declarations of the civil servants would be made public on the official website from next year, he quoted another example.

“If we had any intention to delay the report, then why had we funded the report? The procedure is that the draft report has been shared with 30 government departments seeking their comments, and the final report was prepared after inputs from these departments”, the Finance Minister said.

According to the Finance Minister, we are making an action plan by the end of December for the implementation of the action and reforms recommended by the IMF in its Technical Assistance Report (Governance and Corruption Diagnostic Assessment 2025).

The minister said that it was the request of the government to prepare such a Technical Assistance (TA) report, as 20 countries had undergone this kind of report. There are OECD countries, which have volunteered for preparing this GCD report, were the UK, USA and others. He said that the IMF report was part of the structural reforms, and the Fund acknowledged the progress made by Pakistan on various aspects.

When the Chairman of the NA Panel, Syed Naveed Qamar, raised the question as to why the GCD report was delayed for a few months, the minister replied that it was the process under which 30 different departments responded on different aspects of the report, so it took some time. However, finally, the government allowed the publication of the report.

In its written reply, the Ministry of Finance replied that the GCD report was published on the website of the Finance Ministry after getting approval from the Prime Minister. This report contains 423 paragraphs and 92 recommendations (15 priority and 77 guiding). The report contains 7 focused areas, including nature and severity of corruption, fiscal governance (revenue mobilisation, revenue administration, and public finance management, market regulations, and financial sector oversight, anti-money laundering and combating financing of terrorism, rule of law and anti-corruption policies).

There are 15 major recommendations including preferences of SOEs, mandate e-government procurement system in 12 months, publish annual reports on investment facilitated by SIFC including concessions and rationale, under SECP, and establish a database of federal business regulations, eliminate unnecessary rules, and create a review process for new regulations, publish declarations of high level civil servants and introduce risk based verification and others. The Secretary of Finance told the committee that the asset declaration of civil servants would be uploaded by next year.

“We initiated this report, and we facilitated this discussion,” he said.

Almost 100 meetings were held in which more than 30 organisations participated, the minister said, adding that the report covered seven topics. “It’s a technical report, the purpose was to move towards institutional reforms like we are undergoing structural reforms—the report identifies structural deficiencies since the time of inception, over decades,” he said.

The IMF report mentions all the progress made in the last 18 months, Aurangzeb said, adding that the IMF recorded its appreciation in different fields in the report. The action plan on structural deficiencies would be shared with “everyone,” said the minister.

The NA Panel also discussed amendments in Section 134A related to Alternate Dispute Resolution Cases (ADRC) and appointment of its Chairman and Members.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025