The International Monetary Fund has reached out to Pakistan’s bilateral partners to ensure that external funding plans will materialise as policy talks continue, sources said on Tuesday.

The ministry of finance has expressed optimism that there are no major challenges in the way of successful completion of talks with the International Monetary Fund.

The government is confident that it will receive money from friendly countries as well as other lending partners including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

However, some sources have also expressed doubts that international loans and bonds could be in doubt due to global conditions.

Pakistan needs a total of $28 billion in external financing over the next year.

Policy talks between the government and the Fund’s delegation will enter their second day on Tuesday. The government delegation is being led by Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar while the IMF delegation is led by Country chief Nathan Porter.

The two sides met twice on Monday and are expected to meet again on Tuesday. The policy-level talks, which began after lengthy technical-level discussions, will continue until November 15.

The government hopes that the first review will be completed successfully and the second tranche of the stand-by agreement worth $710 million will be received in the beginning of December.

The first tranche of the agreement worht $1.2 billion was received in July.

During the talks, the IMF has pressed the government to ensure that it meets revenue collection targets for the current year. The government has also assured the IMF that it will collect more taxes from the real-estate sector