IMF slashes Pakistan's growth rate to 0.5% for FY23 amid high inflation

The IMF has lowered its forecast for Pakistan's economic growth rate from 2 per cent to just 0.5 per cent for the current fiscal year, amid high inflation and a growing unemployment rate in the cash-strapped country.

This showed an unambiguous deterioration of economic fundamentals over the last six months since October when the IMF forecast the country's gross domestic product to grow by 3.5 per cent against 6 per cent for 2022 ago and inflation at 20 per cent against 12.1 per cent.

The revision in Pakistan's growth prospects is in line with similar 0.4 per cent and 0.6 per cent projected last week by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, respectively. They also projected inflation at 29.5 per cent and 27.5 per cent respectively for the current year, the Dawn newspaper reported on Wednesday.

In its flagship World Economic Outlook (WEO), the IMF has also estimated the unemployment rate in Pakistan to rise to 7 per cent against 6.2 per cent last year. For fiscal 2024, ...