Daily Times

Pakistan received a total of $7.21 billion external inflows during July-Feb period of the current fiscal year 2020-21 from bilateral and multilateral development partners, foreign commercial borrowing, and time deposits to restructure its economy and finance its development projects.

According to the data released by the Policy Analysis & Development Wing of Economic Affairs Division (EAD), these external inflows from multiple sources are around 59 percent of the annual budget estimates of $12.23 billion for the entire fiscal year FY21. In the corresponding period of FY20, the external inflows were $6.28 billion i.e. around 51% of the then annual budgeted amount of $12.96 billion.

Out of $7.21 billion, the government received $1.35 billion in the form of programme/budgetary support assistance to restructure economy, $3.11 billion as foreign commercial borrowing to repay maturing foreign commercial loans, $1.35 billion as project assistance to finance its development projects for improving the socio-economic development of the country and for asset creation and $399 million as commodity financing while $1 billion were received as safe deposits from China.

The disbursement from bilateral and multilateral development partners also maintained a strong trend and is $3.10 billion of foreign economic assistance during 8MFY21 against the budgetary allocation of $5.811 billion for FY21 on concessional terms with a longer maturity. These healthy inflows also helped to improve foreign exchange reserves and exchange rate stability, the monthly bulletin of Foreign Economic Assistance by the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) reported.

Foreign assistance obtained by Pakistan through multilateral sources during July-Feb FY21 totalled $2.83 billion. Amongst the multilateral development partners, Asian Development Bank provided $1.21 billion and World Bank $909 million against the budgetary allocation of $2.257 billion.

The monthly bulletin revealed that the collective disbursement from bilateral donors amounted to $272 million during 8MFY21 wherein Pakistan received $95.4 million from China, followed by the United States with $76.6 million and France with $34.8 million.

Increased level of external inflows from multilateral and bilateral development partners is indicative of their confidence in development priorities and policies of the government including implementation of reforms in the priority areas of fiscal and debt management, energy sector, and ease of doing business.

The strong official inflows during the first seven months of the current fiscal year helped the government to discharge its external public debt obligation of $4.12 billion against the annual repayment estimates of $10.36 billion for the entire Fiscal Year. Of which, $3.47 billion (84 percent of total external public debt servicing) was repaid as principal and $650 million (16 percent) as interest on the outstanding stock of external public debt.