The government has decided not to further extend the Extended Credit Facility programme being offered by the International Monetary Fund as the country does not need any such credit at the moment.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith came up with the disclosure yesterday while talking to reporters after a meeting with the Asian Development Executive Director Maliami Bin Hamad at his secretariat office in the city.
We will take another credit facility from the IMF after an interval and also when the country is in need of getting such loans, finance minister categorically told the reporters.
“Though the IMF’s ECF review team expresses its willingness to extend its ECF to us but I’ve informed the mission that the government decided not to extend the ECF program any further.”
As asked to comment as to whether any Value Added Tax (VAT) reform condition on the existing ECF, he said, “There has been no such conditions but I don’t know why the IMF mission is talking too much about the VAT reform”.
The minister, however, revealed that there would be no difficulties in getting the last two installments under ECF programme.
Meanwhile, the visiting IMF team has expressed its dissatisfaction over the sluggish progress in VAT reforms as the VAT law implementation was one of the IMF conditions for ECF fund.
