KARACHI: Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves held by the central bank increased by $23 million to $15.851 billion during the week ending April 30, the State Bank of Pakistan said on Thursday.
The country’s total liquid foreign reserves rose by $24 million to $21.294 billion. The reserves of commercial banks increased by just $2 million to $5.443 billion.The SBP continued to buy dollars from the interbank foreign exchange market to build up its reserves and make external debt repayments.
The consecutive surpluses in February and March led to a small cumulative current account surplus during July-March FY26, the SBP said in the monetary policy statement last month. This was mainly supported by resilient workers’ remittances. Accordingly, the current account in FY26 is now likely to remain closer to the lower bound of the earlier projected range, despite a challenging external environment, including a significant worsening of terms-of-trade, it added.
It noted that the government raised external financing through enhanced bilateral arrangements and issuance of Eurobonds, which cushioned the impact of the recent debt and liability repayments on SBP’s FX reserves. The central bank expects its FX reserves to reach $18 billion by the end of June.The SBP expects remittances to decline to $41 billion this fiscal year, down from previous projections of $42 billion due to the impact of the Middle East conflict.
