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

Shamshad Akhtar, Pakistan's central bank governor, travelled to Dubai last night to hold talks with an IMF mission group. The focus of negotiations will be a multibillion-dollar bailout package designed to avert a balance of payments crisis as Pakistan's foreign reserves plummet.

Officials of the IMF said that financing could be provided through its emergency financing mechanism, a fast-track process that has been revived in the wake of the sub-prime crisis.

Pakistan's economy has all but fallen apart in recent months, rocked by terror attacks, high oil and food prices and the seizure of the global credit markets. The country's foreign reserves have fallen by three quarters in a year, to about $4.3billion, according to Bloomberg data - a sum barely sufficient to cover a month's imports.

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

According to Pakistani officials, up to $4billion is needed within a month to avert a balance of payments crisis. It is a sum that the IMF, with resources to make an estimated $200billion in loans, could cover easily.

Shaukat Tarin, an economic adviser to the Pakistani Government, said this week: “The immediate requirement is to get $3billion to $4billion in the next 30 days.”

The decision to turn to the IMF, which traditionally has 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 Zardari. He has said that he considered the Washington-based institution a lender of last resort and that that his Government, Pakistan's first democratically elected administration in a decade, would survive by “tightening its belt”.

The Government has made reforms that should please IMF officials, including cutting 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 have failed to secure the urgent financial support that his seven-month-old regime badly needs.

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

The Pakistan talks, expected to last several days, are among several developments that promise to thrust the IMF, an institution whose traditional firefighting role was being questioned only 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 to be close to a deal with the organisation.

Pakistan is likely to pose the IMF with its most challenging operation. The country's Government is fighting militants on its border with Afghanistan and is living under a security threat of which IMF officials are all too aware. They are holding their meetings with Pakistani officials in Dubai because Islamabad is deemed to be too dangerous.

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