The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has set ten Structural Benchmarks (SBs) for stand-by arrangement (SBA) including not granting further tax amnesties as well as avoiding the practice of issuing new preferential tax treatments or exemptions.
The Fund in its latest country report on Pakistan stated that program performance will be monitored through quantitative performance criteria (QPCs), indicative targets (ITs), SBs, and quarterly reviews, including the regular assessment of financing commitments to ensure the program remains fully financed.
The Fund had set two prior actions including
The report noted three Structural Benchmarks on fiscal including (1) committing to not grant further tax amnesties (continuous), (2) avoiding the practice of issuing new preferential tax treatments or exemptions (continuous), (3) issuance by the Central Monitoring Unit (CMU) of its first periodic report on the performance of SOEs, using latest available data, to the federal government (end-Dec. 2023).
For the social sector, the Fund has sect one SB including inflation adjustment of the unconditional cash transfer (Kafalat) (end-Jan. 2024).
On Monetary and Financial, IMF has set two SB (1) the average premium between the interbank and open market rate will be no more than 1.25 percent during any consecutive business day period (continuous), (2) submission to parliament of amendments to align Pakistan’s early intervention, bank resolution, and crisis management arrangements with international good practices, in line with IMF staff recommendations (end-Dec. 2023).
The fund has set two SB on the Energy Sector and State-Owned Enterprises (notification of the annual rebasing (AR) for the fiscal year 2024 to take effect on July 1, 2023 (end-Jul. 2023), (2) improve state-owned enterprise (SOE) governance by:
On Climate, one SB is set i.e. Cabinet adoption of a Climate-PIMA and PIMA action plan (end-Dec. 2023). On Economic Statistics one SB is set i.e. compilation and dissemination of Quarterly National Accounts for FY24Q1 and revised annual estimates for fiscal year 2023 (end-Nov. 2023).
The Fund has set four indicate targets:
The Fund has set two continuous Performance Criteria including (1) Zero new flow of SBP’s credit to the general government and (2) Zero ceiling on the accumulation of external public payment arrears by the general government.
The fund has set seven quantitative performance criteria:
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