Sources said the board of IMF will meet in Washington on Friday, but there is no assurance that it would decide on releasing $123 million, the seventh and the final instalment of the PRGF loan, to Bangladesh.

Despite various reforms in different sectors, the IMF officials are not satisfied with the revenue growth in last few years, sources said adding that this may prevent completion of the sixth, also the final, PRGF review.

The revised budget of the current fiscal set a growth of 11 percent of tax revenue, which was 19 percent in the original budget. The finance ministry sources believe that even the revised target will not be achieved.

A mission of the IMF visited Dhaka in April and submitted an evaluation report on the PRGF, which said, "All revenue targets under the PRGF-supported programme were consistently missed, and this remains one of the main reasons (along with other missed performance criteria) preventing completion of the sixth and final PRGF review."

"The major failure during the PRGF period was the inability to improve government revenue," the report read.

It said that government revenue in FY03 was 10.3 percent of GDP while it is projected to be 10.4 percent of GDP in FY07. "While a welcome shift away from taxes on international trade underlie these numbers, no overall progress in raising total revenue has been made despite a PRGF objective to improve revenue by 1.5 percentage points," it observed.

The evaluation report, however, lauded progress in structural reforms that included strengthening central bank operations and monitoring the financial sector, privatising one of the Nationalised Commercial Banks (NCBs) and corporatising others.

The agreement for PRGF was signed in June 2003 and so far in six instalments the IMF gave $467 million to Bangladesh under strict conditions by controlling country's economic sovereignty.

A finance ministry source, however, said that the IMF is happy with the present caretaker government's performances, which had already brought a number of much-awaited reforms.

"The IMF may approach Bangladesh with three new proposals," one official said. First of all, he said, the IMF may initiate negotiation for a new PRGF programme, secondly they may also offer a staff monitored programme and thirdly, for a close consultation in the context of regular IMF surveillance supported by written assessments of macroeconomic performance when needed to catalyse donor support.

Although the first option is better, the third option is a good transitional choice until a new PRGF programme can be finalised, sources said.

The IMF's PRGF programme came under strong criticism in many countries for strict restrictions. In 2004, Shaukat Aziz, the then finance minister of Pakistan (now the prime minister) said his country would say goodbye to the IMF for imposing conditions on the country's economic policies.

Many economists of Bangladesh are also sceptic about the IMF loan saying that it is time to examine the loan's sustainability.

Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) recently asked the government to rethink before going for a fresh PRGF agreement with the IMF.