ISLAMABAD – Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin on Friday shared details of an agreement under which Riyadh parked $3 billion in the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in December 2021 for a year.
The agreement had been signed between Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) Chief Executive Officer Sultan Bin AbdulRahman Al-Marshad and SBP Governor Dr. Reza Baqir.
Tarin while responding to a query in Senate said that Pakistan will start, using the Saudi oil facility on deferred payment from next month.
He said that Pakistan received three billion dollars from Saudi Arabia in the month of December 2021 for a period of one year at four percent interest rate.
Tarin said the country’s exports and remittances are increasing whilst the trade deficit reduced by 1.5 billion dollars last month.
He told the house that the government has tried not to put burden of increasing oil prices in the international market on to the people.
He said, “We have reduced the sales tax and Petroleum Development Levy on petroleum products to provide relief to the masses”.
The Finance Minister said the foreign exchange reserves of State Bank of Pakistan have increased over the last one year which will help reduce pressure on the rupee, state broadcaster reported.
Responding to a supplementary question, he said that twenty seven out of twenty eight conditions of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
He said we have fulfilled our targets and hoped the country will come out of the grey list in the next review meeting of the FATF.
Read more: https://pakobserver.net/cabinet-approves-agreement-to-keep-saudi-3b-in-sbp/
