KARACHI: The country’s current account deficit has decreased by 80 percent to $159 million in the first month of the newly-started fiscal year of 2015-16 as compared with the last year’s $820 million.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP), the current account deficit was 0.6 percent of GDP in July as the country received the first tranche of $337 million from the United States under the CSF during last month. Remittances were recorded at $1.66 billion in July 2015 as against $1.64 billion in July 2014.
The CSF is the US compensation for defence and logistics spending by Pakistan as part of the war against terrorism. The country has received nearly $13 billion in CSF reimbursements since 2001. Both exports and imports dropped in July 2015. Exports decreased to $1.76 billion from $1.91 billion in July 2014, while imports shrank to $3.5 billion from $4.0 billion. The overall external current account deficit was contained at $2.3 billion in FY15, around 27 percent lower than in FY14.
