Imran Khan meets IMF officials, backs bailout deal struck by Pakistan govt

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Imran Khan expressed support for a recently-reached bailout deal with the IMF after a meeting with officials of the lender on Friday, his party said. The IMF said it was, in the lead up to national elections in the autumn, seeking the support of Pakistan's political parties, including Khan's, for the new nine-month $3 billion stand-by arrangement and policies associated with the programme.Hammad Azhar, a former finance minister under Khan, who attended the meeting virtually, said in a post on Twitter that the former premier and his economic team had discussed last week's staff-level deal between the IMF and Pakistan's government.

«In this context we support the overall objectives and key policies,» Azhar said. Earlier, the IMF's resident representative Esther Perez Ruiz said in a statement that the meetings with political parties were to «seek assurances of their support for the key objectives and policies under a new IMF-supported program ahead of the approaching national elections».

The new deal, which will be vital to help stabilise Pakistan's struggling $350 billion economy, will be taken up for approval by the IMF board on July 12. The programme looks to replace a four-year Extended Financing Facility programme, originally signed by Khan's government in 2019, and which expired last month.