arrived<\/a> in Pakistan on October 7, and said, \u201cWe have had very constructive engagement with the [IMF] mission here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cWe have a few outstanding issues \u2014 from my perspective, no showstoppers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will continue these discussions virtually tonight, into the weekend, and hopefully early [next] week when the [State Bank of Pakistan] governor, finance secretary and myself are in Washington. We hope to get moving with the staff-level agreement,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, Aurangzeb also lauded the Saudi delegation\u2019s visit, terming it \u201ctimely\u201d. He called it an opportunity for Pakistan to \u201cstep up in terms of inviting [investors], and equally making sure that our existing investors work in a good environment\u201c.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The finance minister also went on to detail Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s vision for the economy, outlining two areas the premier aimed to prioritise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne is taxation reform,\u201d he said, acknowledging the \u201cadditional burden business leaders face in the formal sector because the other sections of society are not setting up the way they need to\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe second is our digital journey and moving towards a cashless economy,\u201d he said, noting that the two were interconnected. He stated that 40 to 50 per cent of Pakistan\u2019s economy was undocumented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stressing the need for digitisation, Aurangzeb said, \u201cThe more we move toward a cashless economy and our digital journey, the more we sort of help the documentation and moving stuff into the formal economy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Friday said that Pakistan\u2019s recent engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was \u201cconstructive\u201d, adding that there appeared to be no \u201cshowstoppers\u201d so far. An IMF mission led by Iva Petrova met with Pakistan\u2019s economic team in Karachi and Islamabad from September 24 to October 8 to review the implementation of the $7 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_3859443944190656_828796993651875":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Friday said that Pakistan\u2019s recent engagement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was \u201cconstructive\u201d, adding that there appeared to be no \u201cshowstoppers\u201d so far.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pakistan"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6442,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6440\/revisions\/6442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}