ISLAMABAD  -  Finance Minister Ish­aq Dar on Thursday said that China has rolled over the principal amount of $2.4 billion loan for two years, which would ease pressure on the country’s foreign ex­change reserves.

“Chinese EXIM Bank has rolled over for 2 years principal amounts of fol­lowing loans totalling $2.4 billion which are due in the next 2 fiscal years: FY2023-24: $1.2 billion FY2024-25: $1.2 billion,” said the finance minister on twitter adding Pakistan would make interest pay­ments only in both years. Paki­stan was scheduled to repay $1.033 billion as a principal amount of $1 billion and an interest payment of $33 million in July 2023. Now this principal amount of $1 billion has been rolled over by China. It is worth men­tioning here that under the financing arrangement agreed with the IMF for $3 billion Standby Arrange­ment (SBA), Pakistan was required for securing the rollover of deposits from bi­lateral partners, especially from China, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Unit­ed Arab Emirates (UAE) in order to keep the foreign exchange reserves held by the SBP at comfortable lev­els. The total liquid foreign reserves held by the coun­try stood at $13,534.1 mil­lion as of 21-Jul-2023. The break-up of the foreign re­serves position is as foreign reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan are $8.186 billion and foreign reserves held by commercial banks are $5,348 billion. During the week ended on 21-Jul-2023, SBP’s reserves de­creased by $541 million to $8,186.1 million mainly due to due to external debt re­payments.