KARACHI: Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have declined by $436 million in the last week due to debt payment.
According to weekly report issued by the State Bank, the forex reserves decreased to $8.09 billion on December 20, 2013 as compared to $8.526 billion on December 13, 2013. During the week under review, SBP’s liquid forex reserves fell by $275 million to $3.193 billion as compared to $3.468 billion last week.
The decrease in the reserves is mainly due to payments of $185 million, of which external debt servicing was $162 million, inclusive of $58 million repayment to the IMF and other official payments equal to $23 million. During the week, there was no major inflow from multilateral and bilateral sources.
During the last week, with a decline of $161 million, reserves held by banks reached below $5 billion. At the end of last week, banks’ reserves stood at $4.89 billion down from $5.05 billion a week earlier.
The effect of IMF’s release of second tranche under Extended Fund Facility will be reflected in the next week’s reserves report.
