ISLAMABAD-Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has approved $500 million for Pakistan, which would build the country’s foreign exchange reserves.
“Board of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has today (Wednesday) approved USD 500 million as co-financing of Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded BRACE programme for Pakistan. These funds will be received by State Bank of Pakistan within November 2022,” said Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on twitter. The Building Resilience with Active Countercyclical Expenditures Programme is an Asian Development Bank (ADB) financing programme to counter the social fallouts of economic crisis. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) in last month had approved much needed $1.5 billion in financing to help the Government of Pakistan under BRACE. The ADB’s loan approval had also paved way for getting $500 million from Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Total disbursement will now touch $2 billion. The government is also expecting to receive $450 million from the World Bank within current month, as Pakistan had met all conditions attached to the Resilient Institution for Sustainable Economy (RISE-II) programme. Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will grant approval for co-financing of $450 million, so a total funding of $900 million will be provided to Pakistan. All these inflows would help in building the country’s foreign exchange reserves. The foreign currency reserves held by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) stand at $8.9 billion. The total liquid foreign reserves held by the country stood at $14.678 billion as of 28-Oct-2022. During the week ended on 28-Oct-2022, SBP’s reserves increased by $1,473 million to $8,912.9 million. This increase was attributed to the receipt of $1,500 million from ADB.