Pakistan’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves stand at $22.498 billion, based on central bank data.
Karachi:
The prime minister’s financial adviser said on Saturday Pakistan had received a $3 billion loan from Saudi Arabia, as part of an economic support package.
Pakistan has faced growing economic challenges, with high inflation, shrinking foreign exchange reserves, a growing current account deficit and a depreciating currency.
Pakistan’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves stand at $22.498 billion, based on central bank data.
Shaukat Tarin, financial adviser to Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, said in a tweet: “I would like to thank Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the kind gesture.”
The loan from Saudi Arabia will have a term of one year with an interest rate of 4% under the terms of the package signed last month.
“This is positive news … and should help strengthen both forex reserves and sentiment in the forex market,” said Saad Hashemy, managing director at BMA Capital.
The loan comes a week after the International Monetary Fund agreed with Pakistan on the measures needed to revive a stalled $6 billion funding program.
Completion of the review, pending from earlier this year, will provide 750 million IMF special drawing rights, or about $1 billion, bringing total disbursements to date to around $3 billion.
Pakistan’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 150 basis points to 8.75% to counter inflationary pressures.
Inflation hit 11.5% in November, up from 9.2% a month earlier.
The Pakistani rupee, which closed Friday at 176.77 interbank rates against the dollar, has depreciated more than 11% since the start of the year.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
