Daily Times

Pakistan has incurred foreign loans of $13.03 billion during the first ten months (July-April) of the ongoing fiscal year 2021-22 from multiple financing sources against the annual budget estimates of $14.09 billion for the entire fiscal year. According to the latest monthly bulletin released by the Economic Affairs Division (EAD) on Monday, the country got foreign assistance of $262.14 million from multiple financing sources during April 2022. Out of $13.03 billion, the government obtained $10.26 billion loan for non-project aid that includes $9.02 billion in the form of programme/budgetary support assistance to restructure Pakistan’s economy, $1.21 billion for short-term credit, and $31.41 million for TDPs while $1.82 billion were obtained for project aid financing and guaranteed loans of $832.53 million during July-April FY22.

Going into details made available by EAD, the disbursement from bilateral and multilateral development partners maintained a strong trend as it totalled $4.54 billion of foreign economic assistance during July-April 2021-22. These healthy inflows also helped improve foreign exchange reserves.The Ministry of Economic Affairs noted the country relied on foreign commercial borrowing as it was recorded at $2.62 billion that included a $1.14 billion from Dubai Bank, $591.25 million loan from Emirates NBD, $61 million from Ajman Bank, $487.26 million loan from Standard Chartered Bank London while Suisse AG, UBL & ABL provided $343.50 million during July-March 2021-22. Similarly, the country received $2.04 billion from bonds issuance and $3 billion time deposit from Saudi Arabia during the said period. During July-April 2021-22, the foreign assistance obtained by Pakistan through multilateral sources totalled $4.05 billion. Amongst the multilateral development partners, Asian Development Bank (ADB) provided $1.454 billion, followed by Islamic Development Bank (IDB) provided $1.21 billion as short-term finance and International Development Association-World Bank (IDA) with $976.93 million. The EAD statement revealed that the collective disbursement from bilateral partners amounted to $485.97 million during July-April FY22 wherein the country received $201.09 million from Saudi Arabia, followed by China with $153.3 million, the United States with a grant of $64.32 million while Japan gave $19.33 million during the period under review.