The IMF’s executive committee voted on Thursday night to approve $2.4 billion in funding to Pakistan through two plans. File | Image source: Reuters
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive committee voted on Thursday (8 May 2025) to approve $2.4 billion in funding to Pakistan. India avoids voting on Pakistan’s “poor record”, which can be used for state-sponsored terrorism and the IMF being bound by “procedural and technical forms.”
The Executive Committee’s voting rule is that countries cannot vote against the decision to provide loans to a country; they can only abstain from it. That is, voting is not allowed.
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Of the $2.4 billion, $1 billion is part of the $7 billion Expansion Fund Facility (EFF) that expanded to Pakistan in September 2025. An additional $1.4 billion under the Resilience and Sustainability Facilities (RSF), is the 25th time since 1948 that Pakistan has received a loan from the IMF.
Despite India’s dissatisfaction with the Executive Committee, it was “stricken” because the voting system did not stipulate “no” votes, according to government sources.
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The official told Hindu. “In this case, India abstained from the board of directors. But given the strict structure and rules of the IMF, the Executive Committee must continue to approve the loan despite our reservations and ongoing conflict.”
Since negative votes cannot be made, the Executive Committee vote was unanimous.
Furthermore, the voting system includes imbalance. That is to say, no equal vote is available in every country. For example, India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka have a voting share of just 3.05%, while the U.S. itself has a 16.49%, Japan has a 6.14% and China has a 6.08%.
Germany, France and the United Kingdom all have higher voting shares than India’s subdivision.
In a statement, the IMF stated that so far, Pakistan’s policy efforts under the EFF have “major progress” in stabilizing the economy and that the fiscal performance of the economy is “strong”, allowing it to remain normal to reach its GDP target of 2.1% by the end of this year.
“The RSF will support the authorities’ efforts to reduce natural disaster vulnerability and build economic and climate resilience,” the statement added.
India issued a statement on Friday night outlining its reservations about the IMF’s additional funds to Pakistan.
“As an active and responsible member state, India raised concerns about the effectiveness of the IMF program in the absence of Pakistan’s poor performance and also involved the possibility of abusing state-sponsored debt financing funds for cross-border terrorism,” said the Ministry of Finance (MOF) (MOF).
publishing – May 10, 2025 at 11:09 am
