Pakistan to seek IMF help for flood-battered economy

Pakistan braced for more flooding in the south as officials were due to hold talks in Washington on Monday with the International Monetary Fund on how to shore up the battered economy to maintain stability.
The IMF said it would review Pakistan's budget and economic prospects because of the magnitude of a disaster that has ravaged crops and infrastructure, left more than 4 mln homeless and raised concerns that Islamist militants may exploit the chaos.
Estimates for economic growth this year range from zero to 3% — below the official target of 4.5% — with Pakistan's ally the United States worried that a weak economy could destablise a key nation in the war against militancy.
The IMF talks will evaluate the economic impact of the flooding, assess the measures needed to address the damage and discuss ways in which the IMF can help.
Help may come in the form of lowering some of the targets of the loan programme or allowing the government to abandon it and take on another disaster-relief loan.
Either way, the government is under intense pressure to deliver assistance to a public that is seething at its handling of the crisis and, if left without food, shelter or compensation, could trigger unrest and possibly fuel a Taliban-led insurgency that the military had said it had made serious progress against before the floods hit three weeks ago.
Since the floods struck, the Taliban had not staged any major attacks, but on Monday a suicide bomber killed pro-government cleric Noor Mohammad and 21 others in a mosque in South Waziristan on Monday.
South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun region, was a stronghold of al Qaeda and Taliban militants before the government launched a military offensive in October last year and largely cleared the region. Taliban militants often melt away when they are under pressure and return to former bastions.
Hours earlier, a bomb blast at a meeting of tribal elders killed seven people in Kurram tribal region near Afghanistan, a government official said.
The worst floods in decades have been spreading through the rice-growing belt in southern Sindh province district by district, breaking through or flowing over embankments.
Sindh is home to Pakistan's biggest city and commercial centre Karachi, but the floods have affected mostly rural areas and far smaller urban centres.
At least half a million people are living in about 5,000 schools in flood-hit areas. The cramped, unhygienic conditions, combined with food shortages and the intense heat, raise the spectre of potentially fatal disease outbreaks, such as cholera.
Clean drinking water for an initial target of 6 mln people is needed.
There are more than 120,000 case of suspected dengue and malaria, while skin infections and diarrhoea have affected hundreds of thousands more, the U.N. said.
The government has been accused of moving too slowly and Islamist charities, some with suspected links to militant groups, have moved rapidly to provide relief to Pakistanis, already frustrated with their leaders' track record on security, poverty and chronic power shortages.
Long-term rebuilding will cost billions of dollars, pressuring a government that was already constrained by a fragile economy before one of the worst catastrophes in its history struck.