Weekly Economic Roundup

February 16, 2020 (MLN): The latest weekly roundup is here to update the financial and economic data releases as they provide a guide to keeping an eye on trends in the upcoming week.

• Foreign investors continued to be net buyers during the week ended on February 07, 2020, as the total purchase of securities outweighed total sales by nearly Rs. 22.024 billion.

• The overall output of LSMI decreased by 3.35% for July-December, 2019-20, as compared to July-December, 2018-19.

• The Weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the Combined Group decreased by 0.38% during the week ended Feb 13, 2020, while the SPI increased by 16.38% compared to the corresponding period from last year.

• Pakistan has posted a 6-month budget deficit of 2.3 percent of GDP, according to the data compiled by Finance Ministry.

• Pakistan's Forex Reserves increased by USD 90.90 Million or 0.49% and the total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at USD 18,735.40 Million on Feb 07, 2020.

• The non-government sector has borrowed another net sum of Rs.32.76 billion during the week ended January 31, 2020, which brings the cumulative net borrowing for ongoing fiscal year FY2020 to Rs.173.71 billion. The net borrowing as of prior week was recorded at Rs.140.95 billion.

• The government of Pakistan has accumulated Rs.64.9 billion during the week ended January 31, 2020, which brings its total net retirement for ongoing fiscal year FY2020 to Rs.30.11 billion. As of prior week, the government had retired a net sum of Rs.95.01 billion.

• Overseas Pakistanis remitted USD 1.91 billion in the month of January 2020 compared to USD 2.1 billion in December 2019 showing a decrease of USD 189.91 million over the previous month.

• Foreign Currency Deposits during the month of January 2020 stood at $7.6 billion, increased marginally as compared to deposits recorded in January 2019.

• Pak Rupee's Real Effective Exchange Rate Index (REER) decreased by 0.15 percent in December 2019 to a provisional value of 95.65 from the revised value of 95.79 in November 2019.

• Federal Cabinet has given approval to a subsidy of two billion rupees per month for a period of five months to Utility Stores Corporation for the provision of edible items of daily use to the people at affordable rates.

• Pakistan and France have signed a grant financing agreement of zero point five million Euros to finance technical assistance for capacity building of the Private Power and Infrastructure Board, the project of Ministry of Energy.

• The Federal government has so far authorized the release of Rs 429.17 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 total money supply circulating within the economy during the month of December 2019 stood at around Rs. 22.41 trillion, as per the provisional accounts on Monetary Aggregates maintained by the State Bank of Pakistan.

• The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) on Monday notified revised prices of Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) for the SSGC and SNGPL for the current month. According to a notification, there is a $ 0.73 per MMBtu (Million British Thermal Unit) increase in the sale price of imported RLNG on the system of Sui Southern Gas Pipelines Company (SSGC) for the month of February as compared to January.

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