IMF pushed Pakistan back to the beginning In a crisis, the government is supposed to cut expenditures, yet it is really doing the reverse. Not so long ago, the country severely needed money, so the previous finance minister, Miftah Ismail, went to the IMF in an effort to negotiate a deal. Pakistan is back in essentially the same predicament a few months later. In the final week of October, Pakistan's financial management and IMF representatives were scheduled to meet to start discussions about the ninth review of the $7 billion loan program. However, the highly anticipated conference was repeatedly postponed, most likely as a result of the enormous discrepancy between the IMF's and the finance ministry's budgetary predictions. It is becoming clear that Ishaq Dar, the finance minister, will have a difficult time persuading the IMF given the nation's worsening financial situation. Due to a decrease in imports and a decrease in gasoline demand, which will both hav...