A whopping $10.814 billion has been added to the public debt in the past year by the incumbent Pakistan Tehreek i Insaaf (PTI) government.
The massive borrowing seems to have ignored the necessary precaution that the government should have taken in securing liabilities, and severely undermines the government’s self proclaimed desire to cut the deficit.
The heavy borrowing in the past year under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who has gone out of his way from country to country to ask for help for Pakistan, means that the country currently faces a rigorous payback schedule over the next two years.
Meanwhile, the rush to acquire money flow has meant that the government has had to rely on expensive foreign loans instead of getting cheap funding in the shape of foreign disbursements.
In the financial year 2018-19, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has decreased its disbursement by $967 million to $541.7 million compared to last year’s disburstment of $1.508 billion. Similarly, the World Bank (WB) disbursed only $652.75 million compared to last year’s sum of $1.713 billion.
