Month: June 2023

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KARACHI, Pakistan, June 9 (Reuters) – Pakistan presented its federal budget for the next fiscal year, one of three measures the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will gauge before releasing at least some of the $2.5 billion still pending under a lending programme expiring this month.The cash-strapped country, with reserves to barely meet a month's worth […]

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s powerful military chief met Wednesday in Washington with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other security and government officials, the military said.Qamar Javed Bajwa’s trip to the United States comes weeks before he’s expected to retire after an extended six-year tenure. Although Pakistan has been ruled by the elected civilian leadership since […]

ISLAMABAD, June 14 (Reuters) – Pakistan on Wednesday approved a liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchase agreement framework with Azerbaijan, its finance ministry said.Pakistan has not procured any spot cargos of LNG for about a year after global prices spiked following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.The country, which has a population of 220 million, had to impose […]

June 15 (Reuters) – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday expressed dissatisfaction with Pakistan’s recently presented budget, a blow for the cash-strapped country which has only two weeks left until its bailout programme expires.Pakistan has barely enough currency reserves to cover one month's imports. It had hoped to have $1.1 billion of the funds […]

Commentary March 2, 2023 Order from Chaos U.S. Foreign Policy Foreign Policy Pakistan Center for Middle East Policy The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has weathered several bumps in the road over the past two years, including, most prominently, the fallout from the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Taliban takeover. The Biden administration has now settled on a bureaucratic […]

ISLAMABAD, June 10 (Reuters) – Pakistan is working on the possibility of restructuring its bilateral debt regardless of whether it successfully completes its IMF review, the country's finance minister said on Saturday, but reiterated it would not approach Paris club nation creditors or seek haircuts."We'll see how things go," Ishaq Dar told reporters, a day […]

[1/2]People throw stones at police during a protest against former Prime Minister Imran Khan's arrest, in Peshawar, Pakistan, May 10, 2023. REUTERS/Fayaz AzizISLAMABAD, June 6 (Reuters) – Hammad Azhar, who has served as Pakistan's finance and energy minister, says police and plain-clothed officials have burst into his home six times in recent weeks, smashed his […]

With everything collapsing in the country, dark humour is the Pakistani’s only respite. But even that’s wearing thin.If I had a dollar for every time that I have heard the Pakistani people called “resilient”, I could probably single-handedly bridge our current account deficit while having enough left over to try to buy Kashmir from India.We […]

Commentary January 13, 2023 Order from Chaos U.S. Foreign Policy Foreign Policy Afghanistan Pakistan Center for Middle East Policy Politics will likely consume much of Pakistan’s time and attention in 2023, as it did in 2022. The country’s turn to political instability last spring did not end with a dramatic no-confidence vote in parliament last […]