Govt borrowed $7.22 billion from foreign lenders in six months.

Byline: Imran Ali Kundi

ISLAMABAD -- The PTI government is continuously borrowing from external sources to repay previous loans and maintain foreign exchange reserves as Pakistan had borrowed $7.22 billion from foreign lenders in six months.

Pakistan had secured $5.78 billion from external sources including multilateral, bilateral and banking sources in six months (July to December) of the current fiscal year (FY20). Meanwhile, Pakistan had also borrowed $1.44 from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF). The latest data of Ministry of Economic Affairs showed that government's borrowing worth $5.78 billion from multilateral, bilateral and banking sources is over 44.6 percent of the annual borrowing. The government had projected to borrow $12.957 billion from multilateral and bilateral creditors and commercial banks in the year 2019-20.

The documents showed that Pakistan had borrowed $2.71 billion from multilateral, bilateral and banking sources only in the month of December. Officials in Ministry of Finance informed that government is borrowing to repay previous loans and interest payment and maintain the foreign exchange reserves. The Ministry of Finance figures showed that government had repaid $5.3 billion as debt repayment in five months (July to November) of the current fiscal year. The country had paid $2.7 billion as interest payments and $2.6 billion in repayment of maturing debt in the five months period. Despite massive repayment against previous loans, the country's foreign exchange reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had increase to $11.5 billion in the December 2019 from $7.2 billion in June 2019.

The breakup of loan of $5.78 billion showed that bilateral...