'Dar-Qadri duel': MoF's response

This is with reference to an article "Dar-Qadri Duel" carried by Business Recorder on 22nd September, 2014. As stated in the article, according to Dr Tahirul Qadri, the current government inherited 6.5 trillion rupees total public debt and raised it by an additional 5.5 trillion rupees. A clarification to this effect has already been given by Ministry of Finance. The stance of MoF was based on the ground that total debt in FY-13 ended with 14.3 trillion rupees and FY-14 ended with 15.9 trillion rupees, so there was an increase of 1.6 trillion rupees during July FY-13 to June FY-14, therefore the observation of Dr Tahirul Qadri is totally incorrect.
The pricing of Eurobond was very competitive when compared with domestic borrowing ie there is huge improvement over the local cost of borrowing of 12.30% (versus 7.75% average of Euro Bonds, a difference of 4.55%) for Pakistan Investment Bonds (PIBs) for comparable maturities. The Eurobond fares better than the 2007 Bond when compared on this basis as the difference then amounted to less than 3%. The Eurobond has great significance for Pakistan, as it not only introduced Pakistan back in the international capital market but also allowed access to cheaper foreign resources for building country's reserves, which have paved the way for exchange rate stability and appreciation. The government is following a well-planned comprehensive strategy to shift expensive domestic debt into a cheaper external debt in order to reduce the overall public debt.
The number reported by the State Bank of Pakistan does not reconcile with MoF reported numbers of public debt owing to definition differential. The present government has initiated an exercise to reconcile these differences with State Bank of Pakistan. The writer has reported gross domestic debt amount which also includes domestic liabilities.
Domestic liabilities reflect provincial government's borrowings from bank for commodity operations which are not a part of domestic public debt. The writer therefore has not compared the right numbers in case of domestic public debt.