The foreign exchange reserves of the country increased by $283.80 million (+1.22 percent) to $23,577.90 million by the week ended June 4, 2021, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Thursday.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country were at $23,294.10 million by a week earlier ended May 28, 2021.
The foreign exchange reserves held by the central bank rose 1.74 percent ($281.30 million) to $16,414.9 million, on a weekly basis as compared with $16,133.6 million recorded on May 28.
According to the central bank, the rise came on the back of receipt of Water and Power Development Authority’s (Wapda) Green Eurobond proceeds amounting to $499 million.
Likewise, foreign exchange reserves held by commercial banks increased by $2.50 million (+o.03 percent) to $7,160.50 million by the week ended May 28, 2021 as compared with $7,153.9 million a week ago.
Likewise, foreign exchange reserves held by commercial banks increased by $6.60 million (o.09 percent) to $7,163 million by the week ended June 04, 2021 as compared with $7,160.50 million a week ago.
Earlier, Pakistan borrowed $2.5 billion through Eurobonds on March 30, 2021 by offering lucrative interest rates to lenders aimed at building the foreign exchange reserves. Pakistan received the first loan tranche of $991.4 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on July 9, 2019, which helped bolster the reserves. In late December 2019, the IMF released the second loan tranche of around $454 million.
The reserves also jumped on account of $2.5 billion in inflows from China. In 2020, the SBP successfully made foreign debt repayment of over $1 billion on the maturity of Sukuk. In December 2019, the foreign exchange reserves surpassed the $10 billion mark owing to inflows from multilateral lenders including $1.3 billion from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
