Pakistan's obsession with a staff-level deal with the Washington-based lender has come full circle. The solace is that the successful second loan review with the IMF will see a new tranche doled out by December, cushioning the borrowed economy with some relief. The finance guru on an optimistic note has, however, stressed the need for synergising the economy on the lines of proactive reforms that have got a pat from the Fund, and that specifically entail expansion of tax base by using AI, digitising the entire spectrum of economy and focusing on existential issues such as climate change and population control.

To boast at inception, the government has an addition of 900,000 new tax filers incidentally in a country where millions of elite and movers-and-shakers are still out of the tax net

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