Minister of State for Finance Rana Muhammad Afzal has said that the government has successfully achieved its development targets during the last four years. "The country has been brought on the road to progress and prosperity through revolutionary policies," he said, addressing a reception, here. Raza Afzal said that some anti-government elements are trying to sabotage CPEC for their own ulterior motives.
On the other hand, Finance Ministry has rejected media reports about Pakistan gross financing needs saying it is highly exaggerated. Rejecting a media query regarding high gross external financing requirements of Pakistan and the risks, the Finance Ministry's spokesman said that such media reports misinterpret external account data and are entirely misleading.
Pakistan's gross external financing requirements in FY 2018 have been misreported in different media reports putting the figure differently ranging from $31 billion, $26bn, $17bn to $12bn. "First, Pakistan continues to maintain a healthy level of foreign exchange reserves despite pressures. Second, the gross financing need for the year 2018 is not as high as reported in the media," he said. It is said Pakistan's gross financing need for 2017-18 is estimated at $17 to 18 billion which is 5 to 5.3% of GDP.
The spokesman clarified that arrangements are in place to meet the gross external financing need of the country. These arrangements include official inflows from multilateral and bilateral sources, Sukuk/Euro bonds, privatisation proceeds, foreign direct investment, private capital inflows and commercial financing, if necessary. After accounting for these arrangements, the net financing gap is estimated to be in the range of $2 billion to 2.5bn.
Meanwhile, Spokesman of Finance Division said that the government had to pay back only 3.6 billion US dollars to foreign creditors against external public debt over the remaining period of current fiscal year 2017-18.
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