June 2, 2003	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, June 1: The total disbursement of external financing for the first three quarters (up to March 2003) amounted to Rs108.84 billion, which included Rs44.67 billion for repayment of loans while Rs64.17 billion was used to finance budget deficit.

This has been disclosed in documents for the July 2002-March 2003 period released by the ministry of finance on Sunday under the IMF conditionality that required it to make fiscal data and economic performance available to the public on a quarterly basis.

The record showed that the domestic financing during the first nine months of the current fiscal amounted to only Rs13.68 billion. At the domestic front, the government made total repayments of Rs52.51 to the banking sector and borrowed Rs66.2 billion from the non-banking sector.

The government also repaid Rs6.19 billion short-term securities during this period under the non-banking sources of financing. The federal government also made a repayment of Rs39.75 billion and provincial governments returned Rs12.75 billion to the domestic banks.

From the medium to long-term instrument, the government collected Rs72.39 billion, which included Rs18 billion prize bonds, Rs62 billion from the National Saving Schemes, including a portion of Rs16.1 billion of foreign bonds/certificates.

The NSS contributed Rs18.8 billion during the first quarter, and Rs41.26 billion during the second.

There was no receipt of privatization proceeds in the third quarter. In the first two, the receipt under this head amounted to Rs8.52 billion.

It means the government, due to its helplessness for the NSS, is unable to use the other cheap sources of financing like commercial banks and is borrowing at very high rates of NSS.

The project aid included in the foreign financing is Rs23.2 billion, commodity aid is Rs32.64 billion. There is Rs12.52 billion special budgetary support grant apart from Rs31.73 billion Saudi Oil Facility and Rs8.73 billion for other loans.

The budget deficit was Rs40.97 billion and Rs65.71 billion for the first and second quarters, respectively, of the ongoing fiscal year. The external aid for budget deficit financing was Rs48.34 billion and Rs34.56 billion for the first two quarters.

The project aid was Rs8.51 billion and Rs15.55 billion during the first and second quarter, respectively.