“An IMF programme may be humiliating for us politically but given our increasingly difficult conditions, we may have no other choice,” the official said. “We are looking at a number of areas where we will be pressed by the IMF to take action.”

Successive Pakistani governments signed up for loan programmes with the IMF in the 1990s but failed to end any of them successfully, mainly because of their failure to meet tough conditions. The public also blamed the IMF for sudden increases of prices in areas such as basic utilities. In contrast, an IMF programme undertaken during the tenure of president Pervez Musharraf after he led a coup in 1999, ended successfully. Mr Musharraf resigned in July rather than face impeachment.

Pakistan's present foreign currency reserves of about $4.5bn are enough to pay for up to six weeks of imports but investors have been shying away from the country.