Thu. Mar 28th, 2024
pakistan

Islamabad, June 5: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has on Wednesday said the country’s military, in a rare move, agreed to cut short its substantial budget for one year in order to help ease the nation’s “critical financial situation”.

According to Reuters news reports, Islamabad has struck a deal in principle with the IMF (International Monetary Fund) for financial assistance of $6 billion bailout package but Pakistan was expected to put the measures in place to rein in ballooning current and fiscal account deficits in order to get access to the funds.

The IMF has stated the preliminary budget deficit needs to be trimmed by the equivalent of $5 billion, however, the previous civilian rulers have rarely dared to trim the defence budget in fear of escalating tensions with the army.

Under this developed scheme, the government would be required to hand over half its budget to the provinces, and thus the remainders would mostly be eaten up by a vast budget of the military and debt servicing.

On late Tuesday, Khan tweeted he praised the army’s “unprecedented voluntary initiative of stringent cuts in their defense expenditures” for coming financial year because of nation’s critical financial situation.

This development would permit the flow of money into the development of the tribal region which borders Afghanistan, which is still recovering from a decade-long insurgency, and development of Baluchistan province, the Prime Minister said.

 

Also read: Pakistan PM Khan summons high-level meeting to discuss $6 billion IMF pact

 

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