Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh met the IMF at the head of the Pakistani delegation in talks which will bring the country back on track to receive the remaining two tranches of $3.8 billion in the IMF programme. These tranches had been stopped because the Pakistan government was not fulfilling commitments with the Fund. This provided an opportunity for the IMF to receive a briefing on the measures taken by Pakistan to curry favour with the IMF, particularly taxation measures. Among the measures discussed during the first round of talks at the IMF headquarters in Washington on Sunday were expenditure control, revenue mobilisation, including ending of exemptions for a number of sectors, bringing new sectors into the tax net, pursuing 700,000 additional taxpayers for income tax, the levy of flood-related taxes and the focus on macro-economic stability. There was no mention in reports that the new taxation measures were introduced only through a presidential ordinance. Though lip service was paid to expenditure control, there was no real description of any measures taken to prevent a select few from maintaining their extravagant lifestyles at the taxpayers expense, or rather by taking out new loans. There was also no mention of the new measures which would make electricity more expensive, and that too just before the summer when the use of fans and ACs would increase consumption. The Pakistani delegation should have taken a stronger position, and made it clear that it knew well that IMF decisions were made on a political basis, and its loans were meant to keep afloat governments which were obedient to the American diktat. The IMFs transparent attempts to destroy the Pakistani economy, using mantras, which have failed in other countries, cannot be hidden, and the current attempts cannot be disguised any more as merely pushing free-market measures. The decision to go to the IMF has put our economic policymaking in foreign hands which are both unfeeling and working against national interests. Instead of courting the IMF so strenuously, and in the process showing its desperation for its approval, the government should tell it where to get off, and make its programme conditional only on those measures which suit the national interest. The present talks would only have a measure of success from the IMFs point of view, because release of the tranche only means that Pakistan has been forced to accept its conditions.