S&P Global Ratings Ties Pakistan’s Chances of Securing Financing from IMF to Election Results

A more stable political environment in Pakistan is likely an important precondition to repairing the government’s creditworthiness, says the S&P Global Ratings. The Pakistani general elections are scheduled to be held on February 8, 2024. The rating agency in a note on Pakistan stated that together with new policy moves to improve investor confidence and bring down inflation, this could lift fiscal and external metrics sufficiently for the sovereign ratings to move to the ‘B’ rating category. It further stated that if the coming elections yield a government that has popular support and able to work with key institutions in the country, it will have a better chance of securing external financing from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Pakistani politics has been in a state of flux since the ouster of former Prime Minister Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in a parliamentary no-confidence motion in April 2022. The political turmoil has hampered the government’s reform efforts to deal with economic challenges in the last two years and has damaged sovereign credit metrics, it added.