ISLAMABAD: Pakistan incurred foreign debt of $7.208 billion from multiple financing sources during July-February of 2020-21 including $3.110 billion from foreign commercial banks, ie, 59 percent of total budgeted external loans of $12.233 billion for the entire fiscal year.
The Economic Affairs Division data released Friday shows that in February 2021 the country received $546.99 million external inflows from multiple financing sources including $380.09 million from foreign commercial banks.
In the corresponding period of fiscal year 2019-20 the external inflows were $6.282 billion which were also around (51 percent) of the annual budgeted amount of $12.958 billion.
The total receipt of $7.208 billion constitutes $1.349 billion or 19 percent as program/budgetary support assistance, $3.110 billion (43 percent) as foreign commercial loans, $1.350 billion (19 percent) as project assistance and $399 million (5 percent) as commodity financing while $1 billion (14 percent) received as safe deposits from China.
According to the data, the government procured $3.110 billion loans from foreign commercial banks during July-February 2020-21, including $34.62 million from Ajman Bank, $400 million from the Standard Chartered Bank (London) including $80.09 million in February, $815.11 million from Dubai Bank, $190 million were received from the consortium-led by Suisse AG, the UBL, and ABL, $370 million from Emirates NBD, and $1.3 billion from the ICBC, China including $300 million in February. The data also reflects $1 billion of safe China deposit.
The bilateral and multilateral development partners disbursed $3.098 billion during the period under review (July-February) against the budgetary allocation of $5.811 billion for fiscal year 2020-21. Amongst the multilateral development partners, mainly Asian Development Bank provided $1.210 billion; World Bank disbursed $909 million against the budgetary allocation of $2.257 billion. While from bilateral sources, France, USA and China provided $34.8 million, $76.6 million & $95.4 million, respectively.
According to the EAD data during the first seven months of current financial year total servicing of external public debt was of $4.124 billion against the annual repayment estimates of $10.363 billion for the entire fiscal year. Of which, $3.474 billion (84 percent of total external public debt servicing) was repaid as principal and $650 million (16 percent) as interest on the outstanding stock of external public debt.
During July-January 2020-21, the government settled $2.103 billion worth of foreign commercial loans. Further the government has also repaid $1.754 billion to multilateral and $103 million to bilateral development partners. For the period July- January, 2020-21, net transfers to the government were $3.037 billion. Positive net transfers came mainly due to higher inflows from multilateral development partners and due to $1 billion in respect of time safe deposit from China. According to EAD the stock of external loans which was obtained on market based instruments has increased by $796 million and the share of concessional external loans with longer maturity increased by $1.241 billion.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021