As the year is about to end, the federal government has accelerated borrowing from the commercial banks to meet its expenditure. During one week, the government obtained Rs208 billion loans from the banks accumulating the money borrowed from banks nears to 1,000 billion rupees in the current financial year, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Wednesday.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the federal government borrowed Rs207.93 billion from the banks the third week of this month to meet its budget expenditure.
Due to the IMF reservations, the government instead of borrowing from the State Bank continued to pay back loans to it.
Out of the new loans obtained from the commercial banks, the government paid back over Rs62.21 billion loan to the central bank whereas the remaining Rs145.71 billion were used for expenditures.
As the government’s revenue is far less than its expenditure, it had so far obtained Rs999.84 billion loans from the commercial banks during the current financial year.
About Rs701 billion were used to pay back the State Bank’s loans.