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Kaieteur News
Friday July 05, 2013
Pakistan, IMF agree to $5.3 billion bailout
Syria’s Assad boasts opponents failed to oust him
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan took a major step toward averting an economic crisis yesterday, reaching an initial deal with the International Monetary Fund on a bailout of at least $5.3 billion to help shore up the country’s rapidly diminishing foreign reserves. The announcement should help calm fears of financial instability in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million people that is also grappling with rampant violence by Islamic militants. But the deal mandates economic reforms that may be unpopular with Pakistanis. Pakistan is a vital ally of the United States, the most powerful member of the IMF, which relies on Islamabad’s help to fight Taliban and alQaeda militants and negotiate peace in neighboring Afghanistan. Analysts predicted U.S. pressure would be key to sealing a deal. The agreement comes less than six years after Pakistan’s last IMF bailout, and the driving need for the
money this time was to repay the institution nearly $5 billion that Islamabad still owes. Pakistan’s previous government failed to implement many of the requirements of the last loan, including reducing the deficit and improving tax collection, and ended the program early. That left the new government, which took over at the beginning of June, with the difficult task of convincing the IMF that this time would be different. The IMF mission director in Pakistan, Jeffrey Franks, acknowledged Islamabad’s checkered history, but said the institution would not punish the country for the failure of its predecessors. “It is true that some previous programs have not been completely successful,” said Franks at a joint news conference with Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Ishaq Dar in Islamabad. “But the IMF is in the job of helping countries when they have difficult situations and need help, and we’re not going to turn a country down because
previous governments did not do what they had promised to do.” The $5.3 billion loan will be disbursed over a three-year period and will have an interest rate of roughly three percent, said Franks. It will be repaid over 10 years after an initial grace period of four years, he said. The deal has been approved by the Pakistani government and IMF staffers in the country, but it still needs to be approved by IMF officials in Washington and the institution’s executive board. Pakistan would like the loan to be increased to $7.3 billion, but that is still under discussion, as is the precise timing of the disbursements. The deal will be put before the IMF board in early September, assuming Pakistan first commits to key reforms designed to increase growth and improve financial stability, said Franks. Those include reforms needed to bring down the deficit, reduce pervasive electricity shortages and increase the country’s woeful tax collection.
Bashar Assad DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview published yesterday that his government had fended off everything his enemies had thrown at him and that the only remaining threat to his rule was a far-off — and improbable — foreign intervention. In comments to the staterun Al-Thawra newspaper, Assad rejected the idea that what has transpired in Syria for more than two years is a revolution. Instead, he reiterated his past claims that it is a conspiracy by Western and some Arab states to destabilize his country. He also praised this
week’s massive protests by Egyptians against their Islamist leader and said the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi meant the end of “political Islam.” In Syria, more than 93,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in March 2011. The crisis began with peaceful protests against Assad’s rule, then morphed into civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown on dissent. Millions of Syrians have been forced to flee their homes. Throughout the crisis, Assad has insisted that his government is not facing a popular rebellion, but rather a Western-backed conspiracy against Syria, accusing the rebels fighting to topple his regime of being terrorists, Islamic extremists and mercenaries of the oil-rich Arab Gulf states that are allies of the United States. “The countries that conspire against Syria have used up all their tools — moral, material and psychological — and they have nothing left except direct (military) intervention and this is too big for them to attain,” Assad said in the interview. He did not elaborate, but the Obama administration is reluctant to mire the U.S. military
in another unpredictable conflict and its allies are unwilling to engage military in Syria alone. The Assad regime says Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, in addition to the U.S. and its European allies, are on the list of countries conspiring against Syria. These states have been chief supporters of the opposition fighting to overthrow Assad. The Syrian president’s comments coincided with a crushing military offensive on the central city of Homs and a meeting of the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul. It was the second attempt in as many months by Assad’s opponents to unify their ranks. The Western-backed opposition bloc is primarily composed of exiled politicians with little support from Syrians trying to survive the third summer of conflict in a country that has been devastated by the fighting. Homs, Syria’s thirdlargest city, has been hard hit by fighting over the past two years. The government controls much of the city, while several neighborhoods in the center of town remain opposition strongholds. A military offensive in the area that is part of the country’s heartland is now in its fifth day.
Mandela on life support JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Nelson Mandela is being kept alive by a breathing machine and faces “impending death,” court documents show, as his family gravesite was restored today. Mandela’s health is “perilous” and he is being kept alive by life support, according to documents filed in the court case that resulted in the remains of the former president’s three deceased children being reburied Thursday in their original graves. “The anticipation of his impending death is based on real and substantial grounds,” the court filing said. “He’s basically gone,” said Charlene Smith, an authorized biographer of the
Nelson Mandela former anti-apartheid leader. “He’s not there. He’s not there.” A younger person put on mechanical ventilation — life support — can be weaned off the machine and recover, but that it can be difficult or
impossible for an older person. The longer a person is on ventilation the less the chance of recovery, said the chief executive of the Faculty of Consulting Physicians of South Africa. “It indicates a very poor prognosis for recovery because it means that he’s either too weak or too sick to breathe on his own,” said Dr. Adri Kok, who has no connection to Mandela’s care. “Usually if a person does need that, any person, not keeping in mind his age at all, for any person it would be indicative of a grave illness.” “When they say ‘perilous’ I think that would be a fair description,” she said.