Pakistan’s International debt burden continued to rise and reached a whopping $63,966 billion, at the end of August in FY2023-34, sources said on Monday. According to media reports a briefing session related to the country’s debt was held, during which it was revealed that the foreign debt had surged to $24,174 billion by the end of August, while the local debt had reached Rs 39,791 billion by the same period. The data presented in the briefing showed that, over the past year, the total loans had witnessed a massive increase of Rs 14,506 billion.

It is pertinent to mention here that, in August 2022, the volume of loans was a comparatively modest Rs 49,571 billion. However, the foreign debt of the country stood at $18 trillion, meanwhile, the local debt was stood at Rs 32,152 billion during the same time period. Earlier to this development, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has demanded tax collection plan of Rs 6670 billion till June 2024 from Pakistan. An IMF review mission reached Pakistan on Wednesday night to review the country’s economic performance during the first three months of the current fiscal year–from July to September.

The lender has demanded tax collection report of all sectors in its projection report. The talks for the next installment of $700 million tranche began on Thursday. Sources said that the IMF team has stressed that ” the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will avoid shortfall in tax collection revenue targets.” The IMF team has also summoned report on Monday from the FBR over progress in tax cases pending in courts, sources said.

The FBR has shared details of one million new taxpayers in the tax net with the IMF team. The IMF has demanded details of tax the FBR collecting from each sector. The taxation officials also discussed increasing number of taxpayers to 10 million from 4.9 mln.

 
Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)