The US-based global rating agency Fitch expressed concern over the uncertainties surrounding the upcoming elections and the potential for ensuring political volatility, which could impact the implementation of structural reforms and pose economic challenges, Dawn News reported on Thursday. It reported that the agency maintained Pakistan\u2019s long-term foreign currency issuer default rating at \u2018CCC\u2019 and noted that it expects general elections to take place as scheduled and produce a coalition government \u201calong the lines of Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s government\u201d.<\/p>\n
The agency has not changed its rating because of last month\u2019s IMF staff-level agreement on the first review of Pakistan\u2019s nine-month standby arrangement (SBA). \u201cWe expect elections to take place as scheduled in February and a follow-up IMF programme to be negotiated quickly after the SBA finishes in March 2024, but there is still the risk of delays and uncertainty around Pakistan\u2019s ability to do this,\u201d Fitch said in a statement, adding that the \u201celections could endanger the durability of recent reforms and leave room for renewed political volatility\u201d, Dawn News reported.<\/p>\n
It expected IMF\u2019s board approval of the recent staff-level agreement to be \u201cunproblematic\u201d and noted that the successful programme review reflected continued fiscal consolidation, energy price reforms in the face of a public backlash and moves towards a more market-determined exchange rate regime. Noting risks to policy implementation, the rating agency said parties across Pakistan\u2019s political spectrum had an extensive record of failing to implement or reversing reforms agreed with the IMF.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe see a risk that the current consensus within Pakistan on the measures necessary to ensure continued funding could dissipate quickly once economic and external conditions improve, although Pakistan now has fewer financing options than in the past,\u201d it said, Dawn News reported. Therefore, any follow-up IMF programme would likely require Pakistan to \u201cundertake sweeping structural reforms in opposition to entrenched vested interests\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dawn News reported that Fitch expected general elections to take place as scheduled in February and to produce a coalition government \u201calong the lines of Shehbaz Sharif\u2019s government\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US-based global rating agency Fitch expressed concern over the uncertainties surrounding the upcoming elections and the potential for ensuring\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":16914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[5033,3642,5031,5035,5034,5029,2841,335,332,5032,5030,95],"class_list":["post-16913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-bailout-package","tag-crisis","tag-economic-challenges","tag-energy-price-reforms","tag-fiscal-consolidation","tag-fitch-ratings","tag-general-elections","tag-imf","tag-pakistan","tag-shehbaz-sharif","tag-structural-reforms","tag-usa"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}