February 15, 2019 (MLN): Pakistan’s External Debt and Labilities as of December 31, 2019, were $99.1 billion, as per the provisional figures released by the State Bank of Pakistan on Friday. Compared to the debt of $89.4 billion by the end of December 2017, this figure has risen by over 10.8% YoY. On a quarterly basis, external debt rose by 2.45%.
Moreover, External Debt and Liabilities went up from 28.7% of GDP in Dec-17 to 35.8% in Dec-18, due to the increase in loans and devaluation of PKR during the year.
A major chunk of the total external debt figure comprises of public external debt, which stood at $78.4 billion (up by 11.3%), and is divided into Government external debt ($65.5 billion, up 8.2%), debt from IMF ($5.9 billion, down 5.7%) and Foreign exchange liabilities ($6.9 billion, up 91.4%).
On the contrary, Public sector enterprises stood at $2.6 billion and depicted a decline of 7% YoY, whereas Banks stood at $4.7 billion and showed minimal change of 1.8%.
Private sector debt amounted to $9.3 billion for the said period, demonstrating an increase of 6.3%.
