Pakistan's central bank receives USD 1.2 billion from IMF for climate resilience

Karachi, Dec 11 (PTI) Pakistan's central bank on Thursday announced that it has received USD 1.2 billion from the International Monetary Fund as part of the ongoing loans programmes aimed at building climate resilience in Pakistan.

The amount was released after the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Executive Board had completed the second review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) and the first of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF), the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said in a statement here.

The decision was taken during the board's meeting at Washington on Monday.

The amount, which would reflect in the bank's foreign exchange reserves for the week ending December 12, is part of the IMF’s dual track bailout for Pakistan with a 37-month EFF and climate focussed RSF.

The IMF has, until now under this bail out package, disbursed USD 3.3 billion to Pakistan to support the stabilisation of the macroeconomics and long term financial structural reforms for climate resilience.

Cash-strapped Pakistan is currently in 24th IMF programme agreed last year to provide it USD 7 billion dollars over a period of 39 months.

As per the latest approval, Pakistan is allowed to draw USD 1 billion under EFF and USD 200 million under RSF.

According to a World Bank report of 2022, climate- and weather-related disasters, which have increasingly been exacerbated by climate change, resulted in USD 29.3 billion in economic losses over 1992-2021, equivalent to 11.1 per cent of 2020 GDP, which slowed developmental gains in Pakistan.

More recently, the floods of 2022 killed 1,700 people, displaced 8 million, increased the poverty rate by up to 4 percentage points, and brought economic losses equivalent to 4.8 per cent of FY22 GDP, with reconstruction needs estimated at 1.6 times the budgeted national development expenditure of FY23, the IMF said in a 2024 report. PTI CORR NPK NPK