KARACHI: Despite the free market and depreciation of Pak-rupee, total reserves of the country declined by $ 303.3 million till December 15, while the SBP claimed that its foreign exchange reserves declined by $ 334 million during the said period.
“The total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at $ 20.383 billion on December 15, 2017,” the SBP statement said. The SBP foreign exchange reserves stood at $ 14.332 billion after a decline of $ 334 million last week compared to $ 14.666 billion. Meanwhile the net foreign serves held by the commercial banks slightly improved $ 30 million to $ 6.051 billion last week compared to $ 6.020 billion.
The central bank claimed that the reserves declined due to the payments on account of external debt servicing and other official outflows.
The reserves position increased to $ 20.666 billion after receiving an amount of $ 2.5 billion of the sale of Pakistan Dollar Bonds.
The central bank has depreciated Pak rupee by 5 per cent last week and now it is being traded at Rs 110.50 in the interbank market.
Pakistan has been running a worryingly high current account deficit at 4 per cent of GDP in the last financial year, which in Pakistan ends in June. And the problem’s getting worse, between June and November of this year the current account deficit was more than twice what it had been in the same period in 2016. These are the kind of numbers that are causing people to mutter that Pakistan might have to go again, hat in hand, to the International Monetary Fund. The country just got done borrowing $ 6.7 billion from the IMF last year.
