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Pakistan's Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Saturday assured a jittery nation that the much-delayed ninth review of the USD 7 billion IMF programme was well on track, a day after he cancelled his visit to Washington for the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Cash-strapped Pakistan and the IMF have failed to reach a staff-level agreement on the much-needed USD 1.1 billion bailout package aimed at preventing the country from going bankrupt. The funds are part of a USD 6.5 billion bailout package the IMF approved in 2019, which analysts say is critical if Pakistan is to avoid defaulting on external debt obligations. The only hitch for the IMF deal to go through was the confirmation of a USD 1 billion commitment from a friendly country, Dar said in his address to the nation. In the past two weeks, one of our friendly countries has again given them (the IMF) the confirmation [of its commitment to help Pakistan] with USD 2 billion. We are now only awaiting the confirmation of a USD
A European Union official visiting Lebanon said on Friday that the international body will increase its humanitarian assistance to the crisis-struck country, but that more significant long-term aid depends on reforms and a deal with the International Monetary Fund. EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic said at a press conference following his two-day visit that the EU will provide 60 million euros (more than USD 65 million) in humanitarian assistance to Lebanon in 2023, a 20 per cent increase from last year. But he warned that such aid is "not a sustainable long-term solution to the massive financial crisis that has left three-quarters of Lebanon's population of 6 million in poverty. To get out of the crisis, he said, Lebanon needs to elect a president -- which would resolve a presidential vacuum that has dragged on for five months - and to ink a deal with the IMF, which he said would unlock substantial financial support also from the European Union that should help .
The government on Tuesday informed the Rajya Sabha that it is taking steps to make India a USD 5 trillion economy earlier than the International Monetary Fund's forecast year of 2026-27. The IMF's World Economic Outlook earlier said the size of the Indian economy will increase from USD 3.2 trillion in 2021-22 to USD 3.5 trillion in 2022-23 and cross USD 5 trillion in 2026-27. "The government has been taking steps to make the country a USD 5 trillion economy at an early date," Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written reply to the Upper House. Observing that the outbreak of the COVID pandemic in 2020 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 has impacted the world output, increased inflation in several countries and raised uncertainty in the world economy, he said, "lower uncertainty in the global economic outlook will help India become a USD 5 trillion-dollar economy earlier". Some of the important measures taken by the government in the past to boost economic
India continues to remain a relative "bright spot" in the world economy, and will alone contribute 15 per cent of the global growth in 2023, International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Kristalina Georgieva said. While digitisation pulled out the world's fifth-largest economy from pandemic lows, prudent fiscal policy and significant financing for capital investments provided in the next year's budget will help sustain the growth momentum. "India's performance has been quite impressive. For this year, we expect India to retain a high growth rate, 6.8 per cent for the year that ends in March. For FY 2023/24 (April 2023 to March 2024) we project 6.1 per cent, a bit of slow down like the rest of the world economy, but way above the global average. And in that way, India is providing about 15 per cent of global growth in 2023," Georgieva told PTI in an interview. That is the fastest growth rate among major economies. India remains a bright spot at a time when the IMF is projectin