Incumbent govt acquires public debt upto Rs7,500bn

ISLAMABAD: The incumbent government has acquired a record public debt of Rs7,509 billion in its first year of power.

According to sources, the foreign debt incurred from August 2018 to August 2019 stood at Rs2,804 billion, while the internally accumulated figure stood at Rs4,705 billion.

Sources said that the total public debt of Pakistan was increased by 1.43 percent to Rs32.240 trillion in the first two months of the current fiscal year. 

The data released by the State Bank of Pakistan showed that total public debt stood at Rs31.786 trillion at the end of June 2019.

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The government has projected public debt to increase by 47 percent to Rs45.57 trillion in five years. The domestic debt is also set to increase 30 percent to Rs26.8 trillion, while external debt is expected to surge 80 percent to Rs18.77 trillion.

Currently, Pakistan’s external debt has reached 105.8 USD billion in March 2019, compared with 99.1 USD billion in the previous quarter.

Each Pakistani now owes more than Rs127,000 as our national debt, the government’s borrowing has increased by more than a fifth in a year.

According to data released by the SBP, the national debt stands at Rs26,452 billion or $190 billion as of November 2018.