July 27, 2002	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 16,1423

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ISLAMABAD, July 26: The International Monetary Fund has indicated to disburse the fourth tranche of $120 million in early October to further help improve Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves.

According to official sources, a four-member IMF mission is arriving here on Aug 8 for two weeks to discuss new budgetary proposals and later to recommend its executive board the release of fourth tranche of $120 million, out of $1.3 billion Poverty Reduction Growth Facility (PRGF) by early October 2002.

The mission will also review the economic performance witnessed during the last quarter of 2001-2002 (April-June). Sources said the review mission will stay in the country till Aug 21 and during this period, it will also visit Karachi to meet the senior officials of the State Bank of Pakistan.

After the completion of the review of the Pakistani economy, the IMF mission will submit its report to its executive board in the last week of August. “And the executive board is expected to approve the fourth tranche of about $120 million”, a source said.

One of the major issues to be discussed with the review mission will be the performance of the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) which ended up collecting Rs403 billion against three times downwardly revised target of Rs414 billion in 2001-2002.

The government had taken the plea that since the CBR had to make an all time high refund of Rs15bn, the revised Rs414bn revenue collection target could not be achieved during the last financial year.