Crisis-hit Pakistan has reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over 3 billion of funding.

This was revealed by the IMF Mission’s Chief for Pakistan, Nathan Porter, who said that the economy had faced several external shocks, such as the catastrophic floods in 2022 that impacted the lives of millions of Pakistanis and an international commodity price spike in the wake of Russia's war in Ukraine.

He added that Pakistan's economy stalled due to the shocks and some policy missteps.

The South Asian nation is facing its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1947.

To help secure the deal, Pakistan's central bank raised its primary interest rate to a record high of 22 per cent.

Pakistan's economy, which was already struggling after years of financial mismanagement, has been pushed to the brink by a global energy crisis and devastating floods that hit the country last year.