By Ariba Shahid
KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistan’s central bank has received $1.2 billion from the International Monetary Fund as the first tranche of a $3 billion bailout, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Thursday, a day after the IMF’s board approved the package.
Having been teetering on brink of a sovereign debt default, Pakistan earlier this week also received $1 billion from the United Arab Emirates and $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, as both governments were reassured by the agreement struck between Islamabad and the IMF at the end of June.
Delivering a televised address, Dar said the first installment of the IMF money “has arrived” in State Bank of Pakistan’s account.
Pakistan’s sovereign bonds and rupee gained on Thursday, following the IMF board’s approval.
The Pakistan rupee rose 1% to 274.5 per dollar in the interbank market on Thursday, compared to Wednesday’s close of 277.48, though it had been up by as much as 2% during early trade.
Pakistan’s sovereign dollar bonds gained as much as 1.7 cents, Tradeweb data showed on Thursday. A bond maturing in 2027 rose 1.75 cents to hit a 10-month high of just over 53 cents on the dollar by 0629 GMT, while a 2024 maturity was trading just under 80 cents, its highest in more than a year.
(Reporting by Ariba Shahid in Karachi; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Nivedita Bhattacharjee & Simon Cameron-Moore)
