Daily Times

The country has incurred external loans of $12.77 billion in the first nine months (July-March) of the current fiscal year from multiple financing sources against the annual budget estimates of $14.09 billion for the entire fiscal year.

According to the latest monthly report by the Economic Affairs Division (EAD), in the month of March, the country got foreign assistance of $588.97 million from multiple financing sources.

Out of $12.77 billion, the government obtained $10.11 billion loan for non-project aid that includes $8.88 billion in the form of programme/budgetary support assistance to restructure Pakistan’s economy, $1.21 billion for short-term credit, and $24.41 million for TDPs while $1.82 billion have been obtained for project aid financing and guaranteed loans of $832.5 million during July-March period of the current fiscal year.

Going into details made available by EAD, the disbursement from bilateral and multilateral development parters maintained a strong trend as it totalled $4.27 billion of foreign economic assistance during 9MFY22. 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 $2.62b that included a $1.14b from Dubai Bank, $591.25m loan from Emirates NBD, $61m from Ajman Bank, $487.26m loan from Standard Chartered Bank London while Suisse AG, UBL & ABL provided $343.50m during July-March FY22.

Similarly, the country received $2.04b from bonds issuance and $3b time deposit from Saudi Arabia during the said period. During July-March FY22, the foreign assistance obtained by Pakistan through multilateral sources totaled nearly $3.95b. Amongst the multilateral development parters, Asian Development Bank (ADB) provided $1.45b, followed by Islamic Development Bank (IDB) provided $1.21b as short-term finance and International Development Association-World Bank (IDA) with $942m.

The report revealed that the collective disbursement from bilateral donors amounted to $320.43m during July-March FY22 wherein Pakistan received $102.05m from China, followed by Saudi Arabia with $101.09m, the United States with a grant of $60.85m, the United Kingdom with $14.54m while Japan gave $13.9m during the period under review.