Pakistan received fresh external loans of $12.18 billion in the first eight months of the ongoing fiscal i.e., July- February FY22 from multiple financing sources against the annual budget estimates of $14.09bn for the entire fiscal year FY22, the latest monthly report by the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) revealed.
In the month of February, the country got foreign assistance of $154.47 million from multiple financing sources. Out of $12.18bn, the government obtained $8.41bn in the form of program/budgetary support assistance to restructure Pakistan’s economy, $1.19bn for short-term credit, and $24.41mn for TDPs while $291.52mn has been obtained for project aid financing.
Going into details made available by EAD, the disbursement from bilateral and multilateral development partners maintained a strong trend as it totaled $3.68bn of foreign economic assistance during 8MFY22. These healthy inflows also helped to improve foreign exchange reserves. The Ministry of Economic Affairs noted the country relied on foreign commercial borrowing as it was recorded at $2.62bn that included a $1.14bn from Dubai Bank, $61mn from Ajman Bank, $487.26mn loan from Standard Chartered Bank London while Suisse AG, UBL & ABL provided $343.50mn during July-Feb FY22.
Similarly, the country received $2.04bn from bonds issuance during the said period. During July-Feb FY22, the foreign assistance obtained by Pakistan through multilateral sources totaled nearly $3.48bn. Amongst the multilateral development partners, Islamic Development Bank (IDB) provided $1.19bn as short-term finance, followed by Asian Development Bank (ADB) with $1.10bn and International Development Association-World Bank (IDA) with $861.8mn. The monthly bulletin revealed that the collective disbursement from bilateral donors amounted to $203.68mn during July-Feb FY22 wherein Pakistan received $100.8mn from China, followed by the United States with a grant of $49.67mn, the United Kingdom with $14.54mn while Japan gave $12.94mn during the period under review.