Pakistan remained in the grip of the foreign exchange crisis in 2022. Now, at the beginning of 2023, the situation has deepened further. On January 6, forex reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) plunged to $4.343 billion, enough to cover just three weeks of imports, after the country repaid $1bn commercial loans of two UAE-based banks. Despite such a massive decline in the forex res
In a book I put together two decades ago, the late Meekal Ahmed, one of Pakistan’s most distinguished economists, contributed a chapter titled ‘An economic crisis state’. He had this to say then: “Economic management in Pakistan has steadily deteriorated to the point where the economy has lurched from one financial crisis to the next. At the heart of the problem has been poor management of public
PAKISTAN owes the world about $100 billion and has to repay $21bn to foreign lenders during the current fiscal year. And during the next three years, it will have to return similar or larger amounts each year totalling about $70bn. So what happens four years from now? Will we have repaid about $90bn to our creditors and owe only $10bn? Unfortunately, no. We have no resources to repay our lender
Part of the 820 wagons procurement contract, Pakistan Railways (PR) is set to receive the first consignment of completely built units (CBUs) of 70 high-capacity flat wagons from China on Monday. “Despatched on Dec 25 by the Chinese firm, the wagons will reach Karachi port on Monday,” PR’s Chief Mechanical Engineer Abdul Haseeb told Dawn on Saturday. “These are the flat wagons on which container
In a move to encourage exporters of software and IT&IT-enabled services to bring more dollars into the country, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has allowed 35 per cent retention of their earnings outside the country. For meeting this objective, the SBP has amended the Foreign Exchange Regulations and advised the banks to mandatorily allow, till March 31, 2023, retention of 35pc of their export pr