Pakistan’s sovereign dollar bonds gained as much as 1.7 cents, Tradeweb data showed on Thursday, after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave the official sign-off for a $3 billion bailout.
The 2024 and 2027 maturities notched the strongest rallies, with the latter rising by 1.75 cents by 0629 GMT.
The 2027 is at a 10-month high of just over 53 cents on the dollar, while the 2024 is at its highest in more than a year trading just under 80 cents.
Pakistan, which has been teetering on the edge of default due to an acute foreign currency shortage, also got $1bn from the United Arab Emirates and $2bn from Saudi Arabia earlier this week.
On June 29, the IMF and Pakistan reached a Standby Arrangement to ease the country’s financial crisis.
“The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund approved a 9-month Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) for Pakistan for an amount of SDR2,250 million (about $3 billion, or 111 per cent of quota) to support the authorities economic stabilisation programme,” the global lender said in a statement.
It said the arrangement comes at a challenging economic juncture for Pakistan. “A difficult external environment, devastating floods and policy missteps have led to large fiscal and external deficits, rising inflation and eroded reserve buffers in FY23.”
The $3bn funding, spread over nine months, is higher than expected for Pakistan. Earlier, the country was awaiting the release of the remaining $2.5bn from a $6.5bn bailout package agreed in 2019, which expired on June 30.
