KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves fell sharply by $ 463 million during the last week due to external debt servicing.
According to a weekly foreign exchange report issued on Thursday, during the week ended on January 28, 2022, the SBP’s reserves declined to $ 15.728 billion from $16.19 billion a week earlier, due to external debt and other payments.
Cumulatively, the SBP’s reserves fell sharply $1.96 billion in January. Foreign exchange reserves held by the SBP dropped to $ 15.728 billion mark end of January compared to $17.686 billion at the end of December 2021. The decline in foreign exchange reserves was due to external debt and other payments.
The federal government is making efforts to build the depleting foreign exchange reserves of the country and recently sold Sukuk in the international market. The federal government has generated some one billion dollars, which have already been received to the State Bank, but will be reflected in the next weekly report.
SBP-held foreign exchange reserves fall $463mn, stand at $15.73bn
In addition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive board on Wednesday approved the loan tranche of $1 billion of its $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme for Pakistan. The tranche is likely to arrive in the next couple of days. With the arrival of these inflows, SBP’s reserves are likely to cross $17 billion, if no major external debt payment will be due.
During the week ended Jan 28, 2022, net foreign reserves held by commercial banks increased by $65 million to $ 6.357 billion at the end of the last week compared to $6.292 billion.
Overall, the country’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves held by the country stood at $22.085 billion as of January 28, 2022 down from $22.482 billion as on Jan 21, 2022, depicting a decline of $398 million in a week.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
Comments
Comments are closed.