Pakistan Economy: Neighboring country Pakistan is getting trapped in a quagmire of debt. Pakistan is taking loans sometimes from China and sometimes from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) but is finding it difficult to pay the interest. The situation is such that Pakistan has paid more than 3.6 billion US dollars in interest to the IMF alone in the last 40 years. This shocking disclosure was made in the meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by MP Saifullah Abro in Parliament House on Thursday. In the meeting, the Finance Ministry presented the details of the loans given to the IMF so far and the repayments made.

According to the newspaper ‘The Express Tribune’, officials of the Finance Ministry and the State Bank of Pakistan revealed in the meeting that Pakistan has paid more than US $ 3.6 billion in interest to the IMF. Documents presented in the meeting showed that the amount paid as interest is more than Rs 1,000 billion in Pakistani currency.

It also revealed that in the last 30 years, Pakistan borrowed about 29 billion US dollars from the IMF and repaid more than 21.72 billion US dollars in the same period. According to the documents, in the last four years alone, Pakistan borrowed more than 6.26 billion US dollars from the IMF and repaid 4.52 billion US dollars. Apart from this, in the last four years, Pakistan has paid more than 1.10 billion US dollars in interest to the IMF.

Pakistan borrowed US$1.35 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) from the IMF in 2024 and repaid US$646.69 million in SDRs. SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF. They are used to supplement the official reserves of member countries and can be exchanged between governments for freely usable currencies in times of need. The value of SDRs is pegged to major international currencies.

Finance Ministry officials also told the committee that Pakistan had borrowed US$ 19.55 billion SDRs (US$ 25.94 billion) from the IMF since 1984 and repaid US$ 14.71 billion SDRs (US$ 19.51 billion), including interest of US$ 2.44 billion SDRs (US$ 3.23 billion).

The committee chairman said the country was not ruining itself, “but we all are partners in its ruin”. The committee later sought details of each programme with the IMF and said the committee should be informed of what had happened in each programme, the newspaper reported. The move comes at a time when Pakistan is set to receive another loan of about $7 billion from the IMF, which will be given in three years.