Shrinking external receipts.

The shrinking volume of external receipts during the ongoing fiscal year indicates a worsening balance of payments crisis in Pakistan in the coming fiscal year. The country has received $8.1 billion in the first 10 months of FY23 as against more than $13 billion in the same period last year, showing a 38 per cent decline, according to the monthly report on Foreign Economic Assistance by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The 8.1 billion worth of receipts in the July-April period of FY23 stand at 35.5 per cent of the $22.8 billion full-year budget target. And this is despite the fact that the government has imposed strict curbs on imports to save its dwindling foreign exchange reserves from falling to the point of a financial default. For comparison, the inflows in the first 10 months of the previous fiscal year (i.e. FY22) stood at $13.03 billion - accounting for 93 per cent of the annual budget estimates of $14.1 billion, even though the full fiscal year assistance finally reached...