Karachi: FPCCI welcoming successful completion of first review of staff-level agreement (SLA) with IMF pertaining to current Standby Agreement (SBA) said it stood by government to surpass its revenue generation target despite all odds and, above all, unbearable cost of doing business in wake of triple whammy of electricity, gas and petroleum prices.

Irfan Iqbal Sheikh President FPCCI’s said, “We can generate more resources through boosting trade and industry than knocking at doors of IMF again in April 2024 after completion of ongoing 9-month standby agreement in March 2024.

He questioned that why economic team of government has still not been able to secure other sources of cheaper external financing from multilateral sources and international financial institutions like World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Asian Development Bank and Islamic Development Bank .

Due to lack of institutional arrangements with IFIs, Pakistan will continue to rely on bilateral loans from friendly countries to complete current IMF programme while, our preference should have been investment, trade and industrial collaboration with friendly countries.

He demanded that now government must tighten its regulatory oversight over speculative trading of dollars by commercial banks as interbank market has shown depreciation of rupee over last 3 weeks.

Muhammad Suleman Chawla SVP FPCCI proposed that government should announce confidence building measures with business community. Any EFS, LTFF or TERF programme over 10 percent is useless given regional and international competitive landscape, he added.

Published in The Daily National Courier, November, 17 2023

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