The Saudi oil facility has been cut to almost half from Rs 20.783 billion to Rs 11.749 billion for July-December 2003 as compared to the same period in 2002.
In the first three months of 2002, the Saudi oil facility was Rs 10.218 billion as compared to Rs 3.47 billion of July-December 2002.
Moreover, National Savings Schemes have shown over Rs 5 billion outflows during July-December 2003.
Earlier, it was learnt that Saudi Arabia is not very much willing to continue offering free oil facility, which it started after the nuclear tests in 1998.
Pakistan was starving for foreign currency at that time and reached almost at technical default but friendly states came to its rescue.
The special budgetary support grant was Rs 7.72 billion during July-December 2003 as against Rs 16.3 billion in Jul-December 2002. The budgetary support has also fallen substantially.
However, the government has also controlled its deficit largely, which was still below 1 percent of the GDP (Rs 33.71 billion) during July-December 2003.
The National Savings Schemes have shown outflows of Rs 5.058 billion during July-December 2003 as against Rs 41.269 billion contributions to finance the deficit during the same period last year.
This shows heavy withdrawal from National Savings and government's reliance on market-based instruments like Pakistan Investment Bonds.
The re-payments in foreign currency by the government were Rs 40.415 billion during July-December 2003 as compared to Rs 31.463 billion during the same period of 2002. While the imports of overall petroleum fell below 20 percent during the same period of 2003.
The project aid was Rs 10.687 billion for the first six months of fiscal year 2003-04 as compared to Rs 15.556 billion for the same period last year.
Comments
Comments are closed.