Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s foreign and domestic loan volume has reached the highest level as the total debt of the country stands at Rs 21550 billion with the national debt share more than 14 billion rupees and foreign debts of Rs 7000 billion.

According to official documents, the government debt soared to Rs 14318 billion in 2013 in which national and foreign borrowing was Rs 9522 billion and Rs 4800 billion respectively. With the excessive borrowing of the present government, the debt has swelled to more than Rs 21 thousand billion.

Documents show that the State Bank Of Pakistan (SBP) received US$ 1.340 million from multilateral, bilateral and other official sources in the last 15 days which includes US$ 501 million received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the EFF, US$ 502 million from the World Bank and US$ 307 million from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Among debts acquired from international organisations, the total liquid foreign reserve accounts for US$ 23,084.9 million in which foreign reserve held by the SBP is US$ 18,128.9 million and commercial banks reserved stands at US$ 4956 million.

Meanwhile, the medium and long term foreign debt volume has hit the mark of 48.2 billion US dollars with the breakup of borrowings from Paris club countries amounting to 12.20 billion dollars, multilateral 25.20 billion dollars, Euro bonds 4.10 billion dollars and IMF 5.60 billion dollars.

Additionally, government borrowing from the ADB reached 9.83 billion dollars and the International Development Association debt shot to 12.95 billion dollars.

According to documents the overall borrowings by Pakistan touched the mark of Rs 2946 billion rupees with the domestic loans volume of Rs 1389 billion and foreign loans share to the tune of Rs 1557 billion. This way the total volume of loans rose to 6126 billion rupees in 2008. The domestic loans accounted for 3275 billion rupees and foreign debt was Rs 2852 billion.

As per existing laws the volume of loans should not exceed 60 per cent of the GDP but the loans have crossed 65 per cent of the GDP at present which constitutes a sheer breach of the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act-2005.

It is worth mentioning here that the government has made an amendment in the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act 2005 in the current year’s budget 2016-17. According to the same the government is about to undertake two deep-rooted reforms in the fiscal management system.

First, it is putting a statutory limit on the deficit of the federal government. Starting 2017-18, in three years the federal deficit would be brought down to four per cent of the GDP and thereafter to 3.5 per cent. Second, the debt to the GDP ratio would be brought down to 60 per cent of the GDP in the next two years and then over a 15 years’ period it would be brought down to 50 per cent.Interestingly, Pakistan’s overall loan stood at Rs 30 billion in 1971 which soared to Rs 711 billion in 1990 and in 1996 it again rose to Rs 1704 billion.