Pakistan gets $12.02 bn loans, grants in seven months

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has obtained total loans and grants of $12.02 billion during the first seven months (July-Jan) period of the current fiscal year 2021-22.

According to official data on total foreign loans and grants obtained by Islamabad showed that the pace of obtaining external loans and grants got doubled as the government received total external loans and grants of $12.02 billion in the first seven months of the current fiscal year 2021-22 against $6.66 billion received in the same period of the last financial year 2020-21.

The revival of the Fund program has accelerated the pace of accumulation of piling up of external debt as the government had continuously relied upon securing dollar loans through launching international bonds, getting commercial loans and getting loans for the purpose of publicly guaranteed loans for public sector entities such as for meeting defence requirements in January 2022. The government secured over $2.59 billion loans and grants in January 2022.

The commercial loans continued to witness a phenomenal surge as so far, the government secured $2.6 billion in the first seven months of the current fiscal year. Alone in January 2022, the government obtained commercial loans to the tune of $591.2 million.

Out of the total commercial loans of $2.6 billion commercial loans, Islamabad obtained $1.14 billion from Dubai Bank, $531.2 million from Emirates NBD, $487 million from Standard Chartered Bank London, $343 million from consortium of Sussie, ABL, UBL and $61 million from Ajman Bank.

Pakistan has fetched $12.02 billion in the shape of total loans and grants during the first seven months (July-Jan) period of the current fiscal year 2021-22. In January 2022, Islamabad obtained total dollar loans of $2.59 billion.

Pakistan had obtained $3 billion deposits from Saudi Arabia in December 2021, so it was continuously becoming part of the total dollar inflows during the current fiscal year.

Pakistan had estimated to secure total loans and grants to the tune of $14.088 billion and along with IMF loans, the total dollar loans would go up to $17 billion mark but its external financing requirements increased more mainly because of higher than expected current account deficit. The government fetched a total $832 million under publicly guaranteed loans in the first seven months of the current fiscal out of which $531 million was obtained in January 2022 for defense purposes.

Out of total received dollar inflows of $12.02 billion in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, Pakistan obtained $196 million from bilateral creditors. China provided $100.8 million, France $7.36 million, Germany $12.25 million, Japan $11.38 million, Korea $0.13 million, Saudi Arabia $1.09 million, USA $45.27 million and UK $14.54 million.

The multilateral creditors disbursed total loans of $3.329 billion during the first seven months of the current fiscal year out of which the ADB disbursed $1.092 billion, AIIB $38.77 million, EU $22.55 million, WB's IBRD $153.6 million and WB's IDA soft lending $847.3 million, IDB $66.24 million, IDB's short term $1.086 billion, IFAD $18.3 and MTDF $3.85 million.