Pakistan receives $550 m IMF installment

The Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet was informed by the Governor State Bank of Pakistan on Saturday that SBP had received the first installment of US $ 550 million from the International Monitoring Fund thus increasing the Foreign Exchange Reserve to US $ 10.4 billion.

This was disclosed when the ECC was discussing the Foreign Exchange Reserves position of the country, the Finance Ministry said.

While reviewing the Key Economic Indicators of the economy the reasons behind the increase of inflation was analyzed thread bare.

Finance Minister, Ishaq Dar, said that the prime reason behind the increase of inflation was that artificial inflation rates were maintained by the previous government by holding back increase in tariff rates, which should have been passed over by the previous government including the caretaker government. The meeting noted that the rising trend had now been stemmed in the last week.

While expressing satisfaction over the stock position of Sugar in the country which is at present 2.229 million tons, the ECC directed the TCP to purchase 100,000 MT to maintain strategic reserves. Similarly the ECC was told that presently the wheat stock was 7.043 Tons compared to 6.750 tons in the corresponding period last year.

The ECC expressed satisfaction that there were 85 days of oil reserves in the country, compared to 29 days in the corresponding period last year. This improvement the ECC noted had come about as a result of clearance of circular debt by the Government.

The ECC was informed that export in the month of July, 2013 increased by 9% to US$ 2.62 billion.

The ECC also discussed the need for a comprehensive strategy to bring in quantum growth in the exports of the country as the exports during the last few years have been hovering around $ 25 billion annually.

The ECC was informed that Large scale manufacturing had shown an increase of 4.2 percent. The ECC however expressed dissatisfaction over the negative growth in sectors like engineering products, automobiles, wood products, electronic and fertilizers, ECC directed the Ministry of Industries to examine the decrease of growth in those sectors and come up with concrete recommendations to improve these sectors.  

The ECC decided to approve a three months bailout package of Rs.2.9 billion out of which Rs.1.5 billion would be released in September.Rs700 million in October,2013 and Rs.700 million in November. This will include worker salary of two months.

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Posted by Tahir Khan on Sep 7 2013. Filed under Business, Latest News, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.