Analysis: Are more loans the answer to Pakistan’s ‘empty coffers’?

FINANCE Minister Ishaq Dar seems to have run out of steam ever since he returned from Washington. His aggressive approach towards the economy and the exchange rate is absent. He is no longer talking about bringing the dollar down to below Rs200, and the “befitting response” promised to Moody’s after it downgraded Pakistan’s rating, has yet to materialise. All of this only suggests that the economic crisis is deepening. Another leading ratings agency, Fitch, also downgraded the country’s rating earlier this week. With it, hopes of borrowing from commercial markets have faded away and inflows from credit sources have dried up, claims Rashid Masood Alan, a seasoned banker currently associated with a World Bank’s subsidiary providing funds to banks for low cost housing in Pakistan. Mr Dar took office, for the fourth time, with the challenge of getting the economy out of one of its worst balance-of-payments crises that has seen foreign reserves falling to a level that merely covers a month worth of imports.