Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who concluded a series of meetings with top finance officials at the World Bank-IMF spring gathering in the United States, says the international institutions have expressed solidarity with the new Pakistani government as it moves to improve the state of the economy. "I had very useful meetings with the World Bank officials and other multilateral donors - they have expressed their confidence in the new government's resolve to improve the economy and appreciated our immediate attention to addressing negative trends, he said, according to a message received in Islamabad. Among the major targets the coalition government has set out to achieve are curbing inflation to below 7 per cent from the current 9 % to 9.5 % and considerably reducing borrowing from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), which swells to around Pakistan Rupees 400 billion this year due to excessive borrowing by the last government. The macro economic imbalances have been ascribed to a combination of external shock in the form of hike in oil price and mismanagement. Dar, leading the Pakistani delegation, met with World Bank President Robert Zoellick and senior International Monetary Fund and International Finance Corporation officials and termed his interactions very useful. The IFC officials, the finance minister said, have shown interest in having equity participation in some sectors. So the international financial institutions have shown solidarity with the new coalition government in line with the situation prevailing in Pakistan. Dar described his roundtable with members of the US-Pakistan Business Council as very positive. "We have identified a number of areas where overseas Pakistanis, multilaterals and foreign investors can invest." The finance minister attended the World Bank Development Committee meeting and met with IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Lennart Bage. He also met with senior US officials from the State and Treasury departments during his stay in Washington and described his discussions as very productive. He is scheduled to meet senior officials from credit rating agencies in New York during his visit.
