IMF deal: relief but no cause for celebration, says ex-SBP chief

The $7 billion agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will provide much-needed relief to Pakistan. However, experts caution that this is not a cause for celebration. Murtaza Syed, a former acting governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, noted in a tweet that for this staff-level agreement (SLA) — Pakistan’s 25th with the global lender — to become official, the country requires financing assurances from its development and bilateral partners. “This is Fund-speak for securing secret debt relief from China. It is wrong, incomplete, and dangerous,” he warned. “It is wrong because Pakistan’s debt problem is not a Chinese debt trap.” Murtaza Syed, who now works for the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), acknowledged that while Pakistan does have unsustainable debt, the foreign creditors are much more diversified. He pointed out that Pakistan owes more to multilateral development banks like the World Bank, IMF and the Paris Club than to China.