Pakistan has paid more than US $ 3.6 billion in interest to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the last 40 years. This was revealed in a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by MP Saifullah Abro in Parliament on Thursday (August 1, 2024). In the meeting, the Finance Ministry gave details of the loan given to the IMF so far.
According to The Express Tribune, officials of the Finance Ministry and the State Bank of Pakistan revealed in the meeting that Pakistan has paid interest of more than US $ 3.6 billion to the IMF. Documents presented in the meeting revealed that the amount paid as interest amounts to more than Rs 1,000 billion in Pakistani rupees.
It also came to light that in the last 30 years, Pakistan borrowed about 29 billion US dollars from the IMF and paid back more than 21.72 billion US dollars. According to the documents, in the last four years alone, Pakistan borrowed more than 6.26 billion US dollars from the IMF and paid back 4.52 billion US dollars. Apart from this, in these four years, Pakistan has paid more than 1.10 billion US dollars in interest to the IMF.
Pakistan borrowed US$1.35 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDR) from the IMF in 2024 and repaid US$646.69 million in SDRs. SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF, used to supplement the official reserves of member countries and can be exchanged between governments for freely usable currencies in times of need. The value of SDRs is based on major international currencies.
Finance Ministry officials also told the committee that Pakistan had borrowed US$19.55 billion SDRs (US$25.94 billion) from the IMF since 1984 and paid back US$14.71 billion SDRs (US$19.51 billion), including US$2.44 billion SDRs (US$3.23 billion) as interest. The committee chairman said the country was not ruining itself, “but we all were partners in its destruction.”
According to The Express Tribune, the committee later sought details of the program with the IMF and said that the committee should be informed about what happened in the program. This step has been taken at a time when Pakistan is going to get another loan of about seven billion dollars from the IMF, which will be given in three years.
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