RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Pakistan’s total liquid foreign exchange reserves crossed $23 billion mark with the arrival of inflows of Eurobond, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) reported Thursday.

Recently, after a gap of over three years, Pakistan entered the international capital market and sold Eurobonds amounting to $2.5 billion to build up the foreign exchange reserves.

The inflows of Eurobond were received into the SBP account last week. With the arrival of these inflows, the total liquid foreign exchange reserves held by the country rose by $2.54 billion to $ 23.220 billion as on April 9, 2021 compared to $20.679 billion as on April 2, 2021.

Overall, Pakistan received some $3 billion foreign inflows during the last three weeks. Before inflows of Eurobond, around $500 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a loan tranche under Extended Fund Facility (EFF) for budget support was also arrived in the last week of March.

During the week ended April 9, 2021, SBP reserves were mounted up by $ 2.579 billion to $ 16.106 billion. The increase in reserves is attributed to receipt of proceeds of $ 2.5 billion against issuance of Pakistan Euro Bonds. The current level of SBP’s foreign exchange reserves is the highest level since July 2017.

However, the reserved held by the commercial banks were declined $38 million to $7.114 billion end of last week compared to $7.152 billion a week earlier.