More on the IMF report - Dr Ashfaque H Khan
The second challenge for Pakistan would be to meet gross or net international reserves target. The country’s gross reserves as of end March 2014 amounted to $5.17 billion. For reserve target, the Saudi grants of $1.5 billion will not be treated as part of the reserves. Therefore, to achieve the gross reserves target of $9.281 billion from the current level of $3.67 billion (adjusted for Saudi grants), Pakistan needs to add $5.6 billion in the remaining three months till June 2014. It will be worth seeing how the IMF reacts if this target is breached as well.
Challenging times lie ahead for the government. Let us all pray that we achieve all the targets set by the IMF for June 2014.