This was revealed in the latest monetary and credit profile prepared by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) after consolidating the provisional balance sheets of the SBP and the scheduled banks as on October 8.
The government's budgetary borrowing, which declined to Rs 26 billion on September 24 after touching Rs 59 billion on September 17 and later increased to Rs 36 billion last week, picked up rather swiftly during the week to reach Rs 51 billion on October 8. Of the total, Rs 35.2 billion was on account of the Federal government and Rs 15.6 billion on account of provincial governments.
These figures compared with a net retirement of credit of Rs 0.5 billion in the case of the Federal government and a net incremental borrowing of a little over rupees five billion in the case of provincial governments in the corresponding period of FY05 (July 01- October 09, 2004).
It is feared the government's budgetary borrowing would pick up phenomenally in the coming weeks in the wake of ongoing relief and rehabilitation work in the quake-hit areas of the country, unless compensated by comparable amounts of cash assistance received from abroad diverted to budgetary support.
Further analysis of budgetary borrowings showed that while the Federal government's borrowing from the banking system increased by Rs 11.2 billion to Rs 35.2 billion over the week that of the provincial governments increased by Rs 3.3 billion to Rs 15.6 billion.
In the process, the Federal government's borrowing from the central bank increased by Rs 10.8 billion to Rs 81 billion on October 8. Its borrowing from the scheduled banks also increased marginally as its net retirement to scheduled banks stood reduced to Rs 45 billion during the week compared with Rs 46 billion on October 01.
Increase in provincial governments borrowing was entirely on account of the SBP, where its borrowing increased from Rs 6.5 billion to Rs 9.8 billion while borrowing from scheduled banks remained unchanged at Rs 5.9 billion for the third week in succession.