January 10, 2020 (MLN): The latest weekly roundup is here to update few financial and economic releases, providing a guide to monitor trends in the upcoming week.

• The Weekly Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) for the Combined Group increased by 0.06% during the week ended Jan 07, 2021, while the SPI increased by 5.81% compared to the corresponding period from last year.
• Workers’ remittances maintained their strong momentum for the seventh consecutive month in December. Remittances rose further to $2.4 billion, growing by 16.2 percent on a year-on-year basis and 4.2 percent on a month-on-month basis.
• Pakistan’s debt market witnessed an inflow of $22.67 million in government’s long-term instrument (PIBs) by UK investors on Thursday, bringing the total inflow in government-backed long term securities for the month to stand at $27.678 million, indicates the statistics gathered by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
• The net purchase of securities for the week clocked in at Rs.8.36 billion, whereas last week, the accounts observed a net sale of Rs.3.78 billion, as per a weekly report on Specially Convertible Rupee Accounts (SCRA) released by the State Bank of Pakistan.
• The total deposits held by Commercial Banks have shown a robust growth of 17% YoY to Rs 17.1 trillion in CY20. This is the highest growth in 4-years and is better than the 10-year average of 13%.
• Pakistan's Forex Reserves increased by USD 258.10 Million or 1.27% and the total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at USD 20,512.10 Million on Dec 31, 2020.
• Pakistan's exports to the UK crossed the one billion dollar mark in the first six months of current fiscal year.
• Pakistan's trade deficit for 6 months (July-December) FY21 was USD 12.42 billion compared to a deficit of USD 11.67 billion from the corresponding period from FY20.
• The government has released funds amounting to Rs1,329.928 million during the first half of the current fiscal year (July-December) to execute eight petroleum projects under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP 2020-21) against the total allocation of Rs1,786.160 million.
• The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet has approved the import of additional wheat to buffer up existing stocks till the arrival of fresh crops.
• The non-government sector has borrowed another net sum of Rs.60.91 billion during the week ended December 25, 2020, which brings the cumulative net borrowing for the ongoing fiscal year FY2021 to Rs.113.76 billion. The net borrowing as of the prior week was recorded at Rs.52.86 billion.
• The government of Pakistan has acquired an additional debt of Rs.59.68 billion during the week ended December 25, 2020, which brings its total net borrowing for the ongoing fiscal year 2021 to Rs.393.67 billion. As of the prior week, the government had borrowed a net sum of Rs.333.99 billion.
• The overall sales of Oil and Marketing Companies (OMCs) for the month of December 2020 witnessed a growth of 16%YoY to 1.59 MTs as compared to 1.37 MTs in the same month of last year, bringing industry volumes for 6MFY21 to 9.75 MTs, up by 12% YoY.
• The cement sector posted a growth of 11.18 percent in December 2020 as compared to December 2019. Total Cement despatches during December 2020 were 4.788 million tons against 4.306 Million Tons despatched during the same month of last fiscal year.

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