Pakistan on Monday paid off the fifth installment worth $105 million to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which took the total repaid amount to $1.395 billion, an official of State Bank has said.
On August 24 last month Pakistan had paid the fourth tranche of the loan that totalled $ 397.2 million to the IMF while it had paid $ 392 million in May and in February this year the country repaid the first installment of $ 401 million.
The official said $1.18 billion amount received in Coalition Support Fund (CSF) from the US had given some space to the country’s economic trouble shooter to repay installments to the IMF on monthly bases. The official said the country’s foreign exchange reserves will continue to face pressure due to re-payment of IMF loans in the next more than three years as Pakistan is likely to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in fresh loan in current fiscal year 2012-13 to seek loan for the retirement of IMF’s Stand-by Arrangement (SBA) facility.
Despite depressive economic situation of the country, the government had paid back total amount of $1.2 billion to International Monetary Fund during last fiscal year 2011-12 from foreign currency reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
According to the repayment schedule agreed between Pakistan and IMF, Pakistan will repay its obtain $7.6 billion to the IMF till the end of fiscal year 2014-15. The $11.3 billion SBA program had expired on September 30, 2011 and the last two trenches of $3.7 billion could not pay to Pakistan by IMF following Islamabad’s failure to pursue key reforms as well as the emergence of the revenue figures fiasco.
Pakistan had enter into a $11.3 billion programme in 2008 with IMF and got disbursements of about $7.6 billion, but failed to get the remaining $3.7 billion due to slippages in performance criteria, leading to suspension of the programme in May 2010 and was ended unsuccessfully on September 30,2011.
5 down, quite a few more to go
