Islamabad: The government has signed an agreement to obtain a loan from a European bank at a high interest rate to obtain the IMF package. Faced with this, the IMF has made the loan approval conditional on obtaining additional loans from other sources or rolling over previous loans.
Sources say that after failing to get more loans from friendly countries, the government has agreed to get a $600 million loan from London’s Standard Chartered Bank at an interest rate of 11 percent, of which $300 million will be for the supply of LNG. Kelly and $300 million in syndicated financing, the highest interest rate debt ever raised.
According to the officials, the Ministry of Finance was initially reluctant to get this loan, but after failing to get the loan from other sources, it had to swallow bitterly, but the friendly countries have agreed to roll over the loan of 12 billion dollars. , after which the possibility of approval of the loan package for Pakistan has increased in the meeting of the IMF on September 25. It should be remembered that yesterday the director of communication of the IMF, Julie Kozek, said that the meeting of the executive board on September 25 , in which Pakistan’s debt package will be considered.
It should be noted that earlier, Standard Chartered Bank has provided loans of 1.9 billion dollars to Pakistan on 4 different occasions between 2017 and 2021. interest, and has provided a loan of $1 billion at an interest rate of 2.4 percent. In early August, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said that we have a loan offer from a foreign commercial bank, but we are trying to get this loan from the IMF. Get low interest rates after package approval.
According to a senior government official, despite a slight improvement in the rating, international rating agencies have placed Pakistan in the risk category, due to which no bank is willing to provide loans at low interest rates, so this debt is forced. Given the interest rate, it should be noted that the country will need more loans in the coming years as Pakistan has to arrange debt repayments of 26 billion dollars every year.
