Pakistan

Pakistan is to ask the International Monetary Fund to ease restrictions on a $10bn loan it received in 2008 after concluding that the recent devastating floods had made the conditions attached to the lending programme impossible to meet, the Financial Times reported. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Pakistan’s finance minister, will travel to Washington next week to ask the IMF to restructure the current loan or consider new financing, according to Pakistani officials.

Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) is said to be under “immense pressure” not to pursue cases of wilful default of bank loans because some leaders of opposition parties and a number of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) stalwarts were among defaulters, sources told Dawn on Sunday. They alleged that the NAB had put off a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to review default cases because of “government pressure”. Top NAB officials may meet later this week to decide how to deal with the cases of wilful default in the light of new government instructions.

Hellas Telecommunications II, parent of Greece's Wind Hellas, said it had begun talks to seek support from shareholder Weather Investments as it expects to run short of cash and is considering restructuring alternatives. Weather Investments is an Italian holding company majority-owned by Egyptian tycoon Naguib Sawiris, with mobile, fixed, Internet and international communication operations in Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Pakistan and Tunisia.

Pakistan will seek an additional $4.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund in April to accelerate the pace of economic growth and shore-up foreign exchange reserves, Shaukat Tarin, the economic advisor to country's prime minister, said. The South Asian nation, which was on the brink of an economic collapse after the balance-of-payments deficit widened to a record level, received $3.1 billion from the IMF in November as the first tranche of its planned $7.6 billion rescue package, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The International Monetary Fund approved a $7.6 billion loan for Pakistan on Tuesday to prevent it from defaulting on its debt and to help stabilize its economy, The New York Times reported. The loan, under discussion for more than a month, at first met strong resistance from the Pakistani government, which sought money on more generous terms from other countries. But Pakistan’s major allies--the United States, China and Saudi Arabia--insisted that it accept the loan and the IMF conditions before they offered assistance.