Karachi July 21 2022: Foreign exchange reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan were decreased by USD 389 million on higher debt repayments, revealed on Thursday by State Bank of Pakistan.
Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue, Miftah Ismail said here on Wednesday that government had taken result-oriented measures to level imports with exports and remittances.
“We are trying to bring imports almost equal to exports and remittances.” says finance minister.
Because we do not have space in foreign exchange reserves to reduce these and we also do not have other reserves. So we want to strike balance between imports exports and remittances,” the federal minister said while addressing a press conference.
The minister said that soon after assuming the power, the government initiated measures to reduce imports and it achieved success in June when the non-energy import bill reduced by 15%.
However, he added, the energy imports increased due to price-hike in international market and import bill surged by 120% last month. He said, there were imports of $7.4 billion last month including $ 3.7 billion energy and $3.7 billion other imports.
He said, the government had taken many measures including improving LC margins, banning assembled vehicles and mobile phones. It also reduced speed of local manufacturing of cars, vehicles and fridges. It also made it mandatory for $1 lac LC to get permission from State Bank of Pakistan.
All this worked and bore fruit as till July 18, there were only $2.609 billion imports, indicating that there would not be more than 5.5 billion imports throughout the month. Last month it was $7.5 billion, so 2 billion was reduced. The current account deficit would also reduce, he said.
The minister said, last year there was $48 billion trade deficit and $17 billion current account deficit, which is not affordable for Pakistan. However, it is encouraging that the measures the government had taken helped reduce imports.
For the week ending July 14, 2022, Reserves held with SBP were decreased by USD 389 million to USD 9.328 billion as per data released by the Central Bank.
At present, SBP reserves stand at the level of USD 9.328 billion as of 15th July 2022 compared to USD 9.717 billion at the end of the week ending 7th July 2022.
During the same period, foreign exchange reserves held by commercial banks increased by USD 20 million to the level of USD 5.912 billion as of 15th July 2022.
Overall reserves held by the country witnessed a decrease of USD 389 million during the week ended 15th July 2022.
