September 15, 2019 (MLN): The country’s financial profile was brought into clearer picture with the following data releases over the course of the week:
The Weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the Combined Group decreased by 0.24% during the week ended Sep 05, 2019 while the SPI increased by 16.55% compared to the corresponding period from last year.
The total debt of the Pakistan government increased to Rs.33.023 trillion in July 2019, showing an increase of 3.89 percent over June 2019.
The federal government has so far released Rs 69.8 billion for various ongoing and new social sector uplift projects under its Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2019-20, as against the total allocation of Rs 701 billion.
The government has released a sum of Rs 139.762 million for various power projects under annual Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) for fiscal year 2019-20 so far.
Pakistan's Forex Reserves increased by USD 132.20 Million or 0.85% and the total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at USD 15,751.70 Million on Sep 06, 2019.
Overseas Pakistani workers remitted US$ 1,690.9 million in the August 2019 as compared with US$ 2039.3 million received during July 2019. This showed a decline of US$ of 348.4 million on month-on-month basis, reflecting the usual one-off post Eid-ul-Azha effect.
Impact of economic contraction was visible in the cement sector; as the first two months of this fiscal saw domestic demand declining by 5.49 percent while exports posted a healthy increase of 12.66 percent.
Production and sale of passenger cars in the last two months, draw a striking contrast against the figures recorded in the same period last year when over 39,350 cars were produced, and 34,260 units were sold. This year, a production of 27,108 units and a sale of 20,094 units has been recorded.
