KARACHI: Pakistan on Wednesday night received much awaited foreign inflows amounted to $1.16 billion from International Monetary Fund (IMF) as loan tranche of Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

The Executive Board of the IMF, on Monday, completed the combined seventh and eighth reviews of the Extended Arrangement under the EFF for Pakistan and allowed an immediate disbursement of SDR 894 million (some $1.16 billion).

Accordingly, the loan tranche was released on Wednesday night. With the arrival of these inflows the total disbursements under the EFF programme rose to $4 billion.

“The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has received proceeds of $1.16 billion (equivalent of SDR 894 million) after the IMF Executive Board completed the combined seventh and Eight review under the Extended Fund Facility for Pakistan”, SBP said in a tweet.

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This will help improve SBP’s foreign exchange reserves and will also facilitate realization of other planned inflows from multilateral and bilateral sources, the SBP added.

Currently, the country is facing a serious crisis of foreign exchange and decided to revive the EFF programme to build the sliding foreign exchange reserves of the country.

As of Aug 19, 2022, the country’s total liquid foreign reserves stood at $ 13.522 billion including $7.81 billion of SBP and $ 5.712 billion of commercial banks. With the arrival of IMF inflows, the country’s total foreign exchange reserves are likely to cross the $14 billion mark.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022