Pakistan is to request emergency aid from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as soon as tomorrow as the country scrambles to raise $4 billion (£2.4 billion) in 30 days to save its economy from collapse.

Shamshad Akhtar, Pakistan's central bank governor, is due to travel to Dubai tonight to hold talks with IMF officials, the State Bank of Pakistan said. On the agenda will be details of a possible multibillion dollar bailout package that would avert a balance of payments crisis as Pakistan's foreign reserves plummet.

The discussions will also be scrutinised for any suggestion that IMF decisions are being affected by the controversy surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the institution's chief, who has been accused of abusing his position while having an affair with a female colleague.

Observers have given warning that the scandal threatens to undermine the fund's credibility at a time when the rule book governing the global financial system is being redrawn and the IMF, in recent years a bystander, is being called on to play a greater role in propping up the world's most vulnerable economies.

Pakistan's economy has all but fallen apart in recent months, rocked by terror attacks and the global credit crisis, which triggered the greatest withdrawals of funds from emerging markets on record. The country's foreign reserves have tumbled by three quarters in the past year, to about $4.3 billion, according to Bloomberg, a level barely sufficient to cover a month's imports.

Earlier this week Mohsin Khan, the IMF's regional director, said that Pakistan may need as much as $15 billion over the next two years to help the country stay afloat as it battles yawning current account and fiscal deficits and inflation that is running at 25 per cent — a 30-year high.

According to senior Pakistani officials, as much as $4 billion is required within a month to fend off a looming balance of payments crisis — an amount the IMF, which has sufficient resources to make an estimated $200 billion in loans, could easily cover. Shaukat Tarin, an economic adviser to Pakistan's Government, said this week: "The immediate requirement is to get $3 billion to $4 billion in the next 30 days."

The decision to turn to the IMF, which has traditionally insisted on conditions such as high taxes and lower spending when it makes loans, is likely to be unpopular with voters and will be embarrassing for President Asif Ali Zardari.

Pakistan's leader recently said he considered the Washington-based institution a lender of last resort and that that his administration, Pakistan's first democratically elected government in a decade, would survive by "tightening its belt".

The Government has made reforms that should please IMF officials, including axing subsidies on fuel and other measures designed to cut this year's fiscal deficit.

However, overtures by Mr Zardari to China, the United States and other countries failed to deliver the urgent financial support his seven-month-old regime badly needs.

A signal of the frustration building in Pakistan, regarded as a vital ally in the West's campaign to stamp out Islamist terror groups, was given recently when officials reacted angrily to a statement by Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary of State. Mr Boucher said his country was willing to provide only technical support to Pakistan. What the country needed, his Pakistani peers answered, was quick cash.

The move to offer assistance to Pakistan is one of several that promise to thrust the IMF, an institution whose traditional fire-fighting role was being questioned just months ago, back into the international limelight.

Ukraine has also said in recent days that it is close to agreeing to measures to allow it to receive IMF aid. Iceland also appears close to doing a deal with the organisation. Other countries including Hungary are also seen as potential new IMF clients.

Pakistan, however, is likely to present the fund's officials with their most challenging operation. The country's Government is battling fierce Islamist militants on its borders with Afghanistan and is living under a security threat of which IMF officials are all too aware — they are conducting their meetings with the Pakistani counterparts in Dubai because Islamabad is deemed too dangerous.

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