Pakistan's finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, opened formal talks on Tuesday with an International Monetary Fund mission in Islamabad, which is reviewing the country's $7 billion loan programme and a $1.4 billion climate-resilience facility. If the review succeeds, Pakistan could receive about $1.2 billion by late October or early November, though it may need board waivers for missed reform targets, including delayed legal changes to govern seven state-owned firms (worth about $8bn) under a sovereign wealth fund. The government also issued new public procurement rules a day earlier to meet an IMF deadline, though the Fund had earlier raised concerns over preferential direct contracting for state firms.