Pak loses USD 7.15 billion due to shrinking exports

Pakistan has lost USD 7.15 billion on account of shrinking exports and remittances during the first 11 months of the Financial Year (FY)-23, Dawn reported. Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper. The Pakistan government despite missing out on targets for the outgoing fiscal year, fixed higher exports and remittances projections for FY24. Exports plunged by USD 3.491 billion, or 12 per cent, to USD 25.380 billion during July-May of FY23 compared to USD 28.871 billion in the same period of the last year, official data showed. Similarly, remittances fell by 12.8 per cent to USD 24.831 billion during the first 11 months of the current fiscal year, posting a net loss of USD 3.658 billion. The combined loss from these two sectors is much higher than the country is willing to receive from the IMF and borrow from commercial banks and other multilateral lending agencies, as per Dawn. A senior banker said: “Instead of spending time to boost exports and remittances, the government remained busy with all its efforts to borrow from the IMF and other sources.” The government struggled hard to get assurances of USD 3 billion from Saudi Arabia and USD 2 billion from the United Arab Emirates to get IMF’s USD 1.1 billion. Financial experts believe that the policymakers lack a clear strategy to control the situation, as most of the time was spent on borrowing strategy, according to Dawn.