The State Bank of Pakistan’s Foreign Exchange reserves reached to a critical level as it is now enough to foot less than three months of import bills, according to an analysis conducted by a local news channel.

The State Bank of Pakistan released the weekly foreign exchange reserves which showed that overall reserves have now slipped below 20 billion dollars mark, reaching to 19.736 billion dollars.

Reserves held by the central bank amount to 13.857 billion dollars while reserves of other banks including foreign banks amounted to 5.906 billion dollars.

If one sees the imports for the month of July and August amounting to 4.8 billion dollars and 4.9 billion dollars respectively, one could gauge easily that after seeing the reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan, the reserves are not enough to meet the three months import bills.

If Pakistan won’t receive any heavy inflow from the foreign inflows, gear up in exports, high remittance arrivals or some big borrowing from the international financial institutions or floating of bonds, reserves are going to deplete fast.

There is an emergent need for sound financial planning in order to shore up the reserves otherwise country will again have to knock the doors of International Monetary Fund and it would cast shadow on the local currency, slipping towards major downward adjustment, said an analyst.