With current surge, country's foreign reserves have mounted to 9.0819 billion dollars on November 29, as compared to some 6.596 billion dollars a week earlier. The major increase has been witnessed in the reserves held by the central bank, which have gone up by 2.5 billion dollar to 5.942 billion during the last week from 3.438 billion dollars.
However, reserves held by banks show a downward trend during the last week and banks' overall foreign reserves reached 3.139 billion dollar as compared to some 3.157 billion dollar a week earlier, depicting a decrease of 18.3 million dollars.
It may be mentioned here that the country's overall foreign reserves stood at historical level of 16.3875 billion dollars in first week of November 2007. However, foreign reserves started a downward trend since the imposition of state of emergency on November 3, 2007 by Pervez Musharraf former President of Pakistan.
The rising current account deficit and high oil payments due to the high oil prices were the major reasons behind the decline in the country's foreign reserves. The rising foreign deficits compelled the central bank to join IMF programme and the latter Fund approved a stand-by loan facility of some 7.6 billion dollars for Pakistan. The first tranche of loan of some 3.1 billion dollars was received during last week, which helped to improve the reserves' situation.