By Karin Strohecker and Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Pakistan is poised to sign a preliminary deal on a review of its loan programme with the International Monetary Fund this week, the country’s finance minister said, a key step required to pave the way for another $1.24 billion payout from the lender.

An IMF mission left Pakistan last week without signing a so-called staff level agreement on the second review of the Washington-based lender’s $7 billion Extended Fund Facility and the first one on its $1.4 billion Resilience and Sustainability Facility agreed in 2024 to shore up the economy after a severe financial crisis.

“The mission was on the ground for a couple of weeks, we had very constructive dialogue with them around the quantitative benchmarks, the structural benchmarks

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