KARACHI:
The central bank’s foreign exchange reserves rose 12.7 percent to $4.3 billion in a week, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Thursday.
SBP’s foreign exchange reserves stood at $4,301 million as on March 3, 2023, compared to $3,814.1 million on February 24, by $487 million.
The central bank attributed the increase in foreign reserves to the Pakistan government’s receipt of $500 million in commercial loans from China.
In total, liquid foreign exchange reserves in the country, including net reserves in banks other than the National Bank of Ukraine, amounted to 9,754 million dollars.
Net reserves in banks amounted to 5,453 million dollars.
Fahad Rauf, head of Ismail Iqbal Securities Research, recently said that the further improvement in Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves is due to the revival of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan program and the arrival of new financing from other multilateral and bilateral creditors, including China, Saudi Arabia. and the United Arab Emirates.
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“They (foreign exchange reserves) are expected to increase to about $7-8 billion by the end of the current financial year on June 30, 2023,” he said.
The country’s reserves continued to improve after the central bank opted to buy US dollars from the interbank market due to an increase in the supply of the greenback compared to the demand for US dollars.
“The existence of a surplus of US dollars in the interbank market prompted the central bank to intervene (buy the surplus),” the source said.
