The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) purchased $7.23 billion from domestic foreign exchange (FX) markets between June 2024 and April 2025, as per central bank data released on Monday.
The central bank reports foreign exchange market interventions with a lag of three months.
According to a report by Arif Habib Limited (AHL) released on Tuesday, the SBP’s interventions led to a $885 million increase in the country’s foreign exchange reserves, while the remaining amount was allocated towards managing the country’s debt repayments.
A monthly breakdown of SBP data suggested that it bought the greenback worth $573 million in June 2024, followed by $722 million in July, $569 million in August, $946 million in September, $1.03 billion in October, $1.15 billion in November, $536 million in December, $154 million in January 2025, $223 million in February, $860 million in March and $473 million in April 2025.
Jun-Oct 2024: SBP buys $3.8bn from market to increase FX reserves
Amid these interventions and other inflows and outflows, the SBP’s FX reserves saw mixed movement during the period.
Accordingly, the foreign exchange reserves were boosted by $280 million to $9.39 billion in June 2024, but reduced by $169 million to $9.22 billion in July 2024.
The reserves rose by $216 million to $9.44 billion in August, followed by a sharp surge of $1.3 billion to $10.74 billion in September. October saw reserves bolstered by $466 million to $11.2 billion, while reserves increased by $835 million to $12.03 billion in November, but declined by $306 million to $11.73 billion in December 2024.
The FX reserves further reduced by $313 million to $11.4 billion in January 2025, and decreased by $169 million to $11.25 billion in February. It saw a significant decline of $611 million in March, followed by a 364 million decrease to $10.28 billion in April 2025.
Currently, the SBP reserves are standing at $14.46 billion as of July 11, 2025.
“These SBP’s interventions have played a key role in building the country’s FX reserves during FY25,” Sana Tawfik, Head of Research at Arif Habib Limited, told Business Recorder.
“This has supported our reserves and helped with our repayments,” she added.
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