President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Thursday said Sri Lanka was in the final stages of negotiations with the IMF on the much-awaited USD 2.9 billion bailout package that could help the debt-trapped island nation recover from the unprecedented economic crisis. Wickremesinghe also said that his government was having "direct discussions" with Beijing to restructure the country's debts with China. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in September last year approved Sri Lanka the USD 2.9 billion bailout package for over 4 years pending the island nation's ability to restructure its debt with creditors -- both bilateral and sovereign bond holders. By the end of June 2022, Sri Lanka owed nearly USD 40 billion to bilateral, multilateral and commercial loans, according to the figures released by the Sri Lankan Treasury. With assurances from creditors, the USD 2.9 billion facility could get the IMF board approval in March, officials said. The IMF facility would enable Sri Lanka to obtain ...
Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and IMF's Kristalina Georgieva also discussed regulating crypto assets
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IMF team which rejected the Sharif government's plan to manage the circular debt, has asked the cash starved Pakistan to end the unbudgeted power subsidies amounting to (Pakistani) Rs 675 billion
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Friday the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was giving his country a "tough time" over unlocking stalled funding from a $6.5 billion bailout
The S&P has risen more than 7% this year and is up more than 15% from its low in mid-October
The International Monetary Fund projected a slowdown in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 3.5 per cent to 2 per cent for the current fiscal, The News International reported
A devaluation of 15% in the Pakistani rupee and a rise last week in fuel prices could help eliminate some key snags, particularly as tax measures are apparently imminent
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Britain is expected to be the only major industrialised country to see its economy shrink this year after the impact of Liz Truss' brief premiership prompted a sharp growth downgrade from IMF
Some 15% of low-income countries are estimated to be already in debt distress and 45% more are at high risk of getting there, with 1-in-4 emerging market economies also at high risk
Inflation in India is expected to come down from 6.8 percent in the current fiscal year ending March 31 to 5 percent the next fiscal, and then drop further to 4 percent in 2024, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday. Inflation in India as in other countries is expected to come down from 6.8 percent in 2022 to 5 percent in 2023 and then 4 percent coming towards the target in 2024, Daniel Leigh, Division Chief, Research Department of the IMF told reporters here. That partly reflects the central bank's actions, he added, According to the World Economic Outlook update released by the IMF on Tuesday, about 84 percent of countries are expected to have lower headline (consumer price index) inflation in 2023 than in 2022. Global inflation is set to fall from 8.8 percent in 2022 (annual average) to 6.6 percent in 2023 and 4.3 percent in 2024 -- above pre-pandemic (201719) levels of about 3.5 percent, it said. The projected disinflation partly reflects declining internationa
The IMF said global growth would still fall to 2.9% in 2023 from 3.4% in 2022, but its latest World Economic Outlook forecasts mark an improvement over an October prediction of 2.7%
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As dwindling forex reserves, nationwide power outages, stampedes at state-run food distribution centres and a Pakistani rupee, which plunged nearly 50 per cent in a year to 260 to the US dollar on Monday, propels the neighbouring country towards being an international "basket case", Indian analysts believe there could be serious consequences for the region. Amid this economic crisis, the Shahbaz Sharif government will begin crucial negotiations with the Washington-based IMF (International Monetary Fund) for a bail-out package on Tuesday which may come with "tough and possibly politically risky" pre-conditions of austerity, feeding into a bigger political crisis, they said. The risk for India would not only be instability in Pakistan with its fall-out of rising extremism in the region but also unpredictable actions which could include bids to divert domestic public attention by focussing on an external enemy. "The current economic crisis is feeding into the ongoing political crisis .
Green bonds can help lower borrowing cost
Ahead of its crucial talks with the cash-strapped Pakistan government, the IMF has found an over Rs 2,000 billion breach in budgetary estimates for 2022-23 in its initial assessment that might result in escalating the budget deficit and primary deficit targets with a massive margin. Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials are scheduled to kick-start parleys from Tuesday for accomplishing the ninth review under the Extended Fund Facility during which the fiscal slippages and reconciliation of figures will be the major topic of discussion. The review would lead to the release of the next tranche of funds to Pakistan which has been pending since September. The government had envisaged a budget deficit target of 4.9 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and a primary deficit to keep it at positive 0.2 per cent of the GDP on the eve of the budget announcement for 2022-23. According to sources quoted by The News, the IMF is currently asking Pakistani authoriti
The Pakistani rupee has dived to a historic low against the United States dollar after an exchange cap was lifted as the cash-strapped country seeks the help from IMF
Following the rupee's devaluation in the open and interbank markets, the benchmark index of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) rallied and gained by more than 1,000 points, as per media reports
Cash-strapped Pakistan has urged the US to use diplomatic influence to convince the IMF to show a lenient attitude towards Islamabad, amid tough conditions conveyed by the global lender to revive its fund programme, a media report said on Thursday. The request was made by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar in his meeting on Wednesday with the visiting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Department of the Treasury for Asia Robert Kaproth at the Finance Division, The News International reported. Quoting sources, the newspaper reported that Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) continued exchanging data this week but the Washington-based global lender has not shown any lenient attitude or relaxed its tough conditions so far. One of the bones of contention is persistent differences over the approach to dealing with the exchange rate as the IMF considers it completely unacceptable for maintaining an artificially stable exchange rate. Though Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had public