ISLAMABAD – Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar left for a visit to theUnited States to attend important meetings on Tuesday, the finance ministrysaid.

Dar will attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund(IMF) and the World Bank. He is also likely to meet with the IMF and WorldBank officials separately.

The finance minister’s visit comes as Pakistan deals with the aftermath ofthe devastating floods which have affected nearly 33 million people anddisplaced 7.9m.

Dar on Monday said that the ninth review with the IMF was scheduled forOctober 25 and ruled out any consideration for renegotiating the IMFagreement when it was in the last leg of its completion.

He also shared that Pakistan was seeking a rescheduling of bilateral debt,which now stands at around $27 billion. However, he ruled out reschedulingof international debt from wealthy western nations under Paris Club,multilaterals and international sovereign bonds.

The World Bank has forecast Pakistan’s economic growth rate at 2pc thisyear and warned that 2.5 to 4pc of the population or about 10m people couldfall below the poverty line owing to the combined impact of devastatingfloods and historic inflation.

Last month, the government had reduced the prices of all petroleum productsfor the next fortnight by around 5pc.