ISLAMABAD  -  Pakistan has borrowed a $8.5 billion loan from international lenders in the first seven months (July to January) of the current fiscal year. 

As per the official data, the country has received $6.31 billion in budget and project financing and another $2.2 billion came in State Bank of Pakistan’s account. In the month of January this year, the country had borrowed only $331.59 million from the International lenders. The inflows helped in building the country’s foreign exchange reserves, which earlier were depleting. The major financing $3 billion came from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The IMF disbursed $1.9 billion.

The government had budgeted $17.619 billion from multiple financ­ing sources for the current fiscal year including $17.384 billion loans and $234.60 million grants. The govern­ment received only 48.3 percent in the period from July to January in the cur­rent financial year. According to the latest data, the country has received $508 million as CATIC (PAF), $2.41 bil­lion from multilateral, $794.6 million from bilateral, $595.09 million from Naya Pakistan Certificate and $2 billion as time deposit loan in the first seven months of this fiscal year.

In multilateral sources, Asian De­velopment Bank (ADB) has disbursed $620 million, Asian Infrastructure In­vestment Bank (AIIB) $282.96 million, $1.058 billion from IDA of the World Bank and $200 million as IsDB (Short-term). In bilateral sources, Pakistan has received $595 million from Saudi Ara­bia as oil facilities, $25.67 million from the United States, $12.38 million from Korea and $30.64 million from France.

The pace of inflows was reduced in January, which was expedited in Decem­ber gollowing the staff level agreement with the IMF in November last year. The international financial institutions had started releasing pending inflows for Pakistan. The World Bank, Asian De­velopment Bank and Asian Infrastruc­ture Investment Bank had recently an­nounced loans for Pakistan. 

Pakistan is expecting to receive more inflows from international fi­nancial institutions in the next couple of months. The country is expecting further $1.2 billion from the IMF and $1.5-4.5 billion from various interna­tional financial institutions like Asian Development Bank (ADB), World Bank (WB) and AIIB within the cur­rent fiscal year. Talks with some other commercial entities were also at an advanced stage to materialise $3.5 bil­lion projected commercial inflows.