EDITORIAL: Data released by the Economic Affairs Division indicates that foreign inflows for the first four months of the current year were 2.723 billion dollars if one adds the one billion dollar first tranche release of the ongoing International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, an amount which is 1.1 billion dollars less than the external loans disbursed in the comparable period of the year before.
This is in spite of the fact that the 2024-25 budget envisages external resources of 5,685,801 million rupees 632,466 million rupees more than the revised estimates of 2022-23 of 5,053,335 million rupees against the budgeted 7,169,136 million rupees last year – a budgeted amount that a major miscalculation to the tune of nearly two trillion rupees. Time will tell by how much the current batch of economic decision-makers has miscalculated the external inflows; however, what is significant is the fact that the scale of lower than budgeted inflows is higher this year.
Two observations are in order. First and foremost the perception that being on an active IMF programme would generate assistance from other external borrowing sources, including from the three friendly countries (China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) who had refused to release pledged assistance from October 2022 to July 2023 till the country secured a rigidly-monitored IMF programme - 3 billion dollar nine-month-long Stand-By Arrangement end June 2023 - no longer holds.
The EAD data reveals that the 5 billion dollar time deposits pledged by China, 4 billion dollars pledged by Saudi Arabia for the entire year have not yet been disbursed; and neither has the amount pledged by the UAE. This has led to speculation that non-economic factors may be at work for, at best, a short delay in the disbursement of previously pledged time deposits by the three countries.
It is critical for the government to smooth out any lacunae in disbursement of time deposits because these deposits are not only strengthening the country’s foreign exchange reserves but also the rupee-dollar parity, which is a major contributor to the decline in Consumer Price Index in recent months.
And second, the data released by the EAD notes that commercial borrowing was budgeted at 3779 million dollars for the entire year with provisional disbursement of 200 million dollars; however, there has been zero disbursement so far. It is relevant to note that last year, too, the budgeted amount from this source was 3779 million dollars; however, actual disbursement remained zero.
The reason: even though international rating agencies improved Pakistan’s rating yet they retained the country within the high risk of default category. This in turn implies that the cost of borrowing from the commercial sector abroad remains prohibitively high.
The rise in reliance on external resources this year compared to the year before no doubt is to enable the country to pay interest on past loans and the principal as and when due. However, given that the budget for the current year envisages a rise in current expenditure of 21 percent, and this too in spite of the prevalent fragility of the economy, the question arises as to whether the government has made any attempt to reduce this outlay to reduce reliance on its borrowing.
Adviser to the Finance Minister Khurram Shahzad stated this week that the reduction of the policy rate to 15 percent on November 4 would save the government 1.3 trillion rupees in debt servicing costs. However, he did not clarify whether the reduction in debt servicing costs, a component of current expenditure, would reduce the percentage rise from total budgeted outlay under this head to 14 percent or whether, as in previous years, the saving would be used to adjust the rise in the budgeted current expenditure that on average has been around one trillion rupees by the end of the fiscal year.
It is, therefore, important that the government should release data of its current expenditure under all heads but particularly those that reflect the elite capture of the country’s scarce resources.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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