During the week under review, the SBP's reserves decreased by $295 million to $9.329 billion due to external debt servicing and other official payments. However, reserves held by the banks increased by $15 million to $6.461 billion end of the last week.
Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves are on decline for the last two years mainly due to higher current account and external debt servicing. In the last week of July, the government had borrowed some $2 billion from China to build its depleting foreign exchange reserves. Recently, the newly appointed federal finance minister Asad Umer has also announced a number of measures to curtail the goods import bill to reduce pressure on external account.