KARACHI: Pakistan Tuesday received some $ 505 million from the World Bank for the budgetary support.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), on Twitter, has also confirmed the arrival of some $505.5 million from the World Bank.

Recently, the World Bank's board of executive directors approved $500 million in financing for the Resilient Institutions for Sustainable Economy (RISE) programme to help Pakistan strengthen fiscal management, promote transparency and private sector growth. However, the loan has been linked with undertaking foundational reforms in the energy sector to switch to low-carbon energy. These reforms are critical to building fiscal resilience and stimulating recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the World Bank

During the last five weeks, Pakistan has received sufficient foreign inflows from the multilateral financial institutions for the economic support as the COIVD-19 has adversely affected Pakistan's economy.

Since June 23, 2020, the SBP received some $3.5 billion for the support of economy, which posted negative growth during the last fiscal year (FY20). These inflows included $737 million from the World Bank, $503 million from the Asian Development Bank and $500 million from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

In addition, some $ 1.3 billion disbursement was made by China as loan. Now on Tuesday, some $505.5 million inflows were released by the World Bank. The disbursement from the World Bank will be part of the SBP weekly reserves data as of July 30, 2020 to be released on August 6, 2020.

The country's total liquid foreign exchange reserves stood at $19.047 billion as on July 17, 2020 including some $12.12 billion of the SBP and $6.925 billion of commercial banks.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020