Govt managing debt with discipline: Finance Ministry.

ISLAMABAD -- The finance ministry on Sunday clarified that the government had inherited a precarious debt situation which it managed with discipline, aggressive control of expenses and increase in tax and non-tax revenues.

In a tweet, the ministry said, the government efforts yielded primary surplus and only the payment of interest on past loans had forced the government to borrow at all.

In the current fiscal year, the government has succeeded in keeping the stock of public debt firmly in check with virtually no increase.

The tweet added that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) data suggested a minimal increase in stock of about Rs 397 billion during the July-October period.

However, it added, this number did not include the adjustments of revaluation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan, and the build-up of further cash buffers by the government, which if adjusted would make the estimates fairly...