The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Wednesday it had received about $1.3 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under its Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) programmes, in a post on X.

The post read that, “The IMF Executive Board completed third review under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) in its meeting held on May 8, 2026, and approved the disbursement of SDR 760 million for Pakistan”.

“Furthermore, the IMF Executive Board has also approved the disbursement of the second tranche of SDR 154 million under the RSF,” it added.

“Accordingly, SBP has received SDR 914 million (equivalent to about US$ 1.3 billion) under the EFF and RSF in value May 12, 2026, from the IMF,” SBP added in a statement.

The central bank said that “the amount would be reflected in SBP’s foreign exchange reserves for the week ending on May 15, 2026”.

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On Friday, the executive board of the IMF approved $1.2 billion worth of loan tranches after Pakistan accepted a dozen new conditions and assured it would stick to the pre-war programme targets to stay on the course of stabilisation.

With the fresh approval, Pakistan has so far received a $4.5 billion loan from the IMF against two separate debt packages totaling $8.4 billion. Pakistan has access to another $1 billion under the Extended Fund Facility and $200 million under the Resilience and Sustainability Facility.

The money would be disbursed early next week, which will take the central bank’s reserves to over $17 billion, said government officials.

However, the government had to stick to the old fiscal and monetary targets and gave a commitment to stay on the path of stabilisation despite strong voices against these policies that have caused higher unemployment, higher poverty, and higher income inequality.

Two ads promoting British beef and milk have been banned after television presenter and environmental campaigner Chris Packham complained that they misled consumers about the products’ carbon footprints.

Both ads for the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s (AHDB) Let’s Eat Balanced campaign used the carbon footprint of British beef and milk to promote the products, firstly stating: “British beef not only tastes great, but has a carbon footprint that’s half the global average*.”

The asterisk linked to text that stated: “Full lifecycle emissions of CO2 eq (carbon dioxide equivalent) per kg of beef.”

The ad for milk stated: “British milk not only tastes good, but is also produced to world-class standards, and has a carbon footprint a third lower than the global average.”

Packham complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ads, and specifically the carbon footprint claims, were misleading as they did not reflect the full environmental impact of British meat and dairy.

The AHDB said the ads’ mention of carbon emissions would be understood in relation to the environmental impact of beef and milk that occurred between the “cradle-to-retail” stages.

But the ASA said the average consumer “being reasonably well-informed, observant and circumspect” would understand the claims to apply beyond the retail stage and include actions such as cooking and wastage.

The ASA said: “While we acknowledged the potential difficulties in producing post-retail emissions data, the claims in the ads suggested those emissions were included and we therefore expected the evidence provided to also include them.

“We therefore concluded that the evidence presented was insufficient to support the full life-cycle claims in the ads, which was how the average consumer was likely to interpret them.

“We reminded AHDB that environmental claims should be based on the full life cycle unless the ad stated otherwise.”

AHDB’s director of communications and market development, Will Jackson, said: “Let’s Eat Balanced is doing what it was designed to do, providing clear, factual, evidence-led information about British food, nutrition and farming standards.

“Since the investigation began, we have conducted independent consumer research which found that the majority of respondents interpreted these adverts as relating to the production phase only, from farm to retail.

“This research provides important insight into consumer understanding and supports our belief that consumers were not misled by the information we shared in these two specific adverts.”