KARACHI: Foreign exchange reserves of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) continued the downward path after a one-off increase in the last week of April. During the week ended on May 11, the SBP reserves declined by $364 million to $10.799 billion, a press release said on Thursday.

The country’s overall re­­serves also fell to $17.067m.

The reserves of the State Bank had increased after finance minister announced that the country had received $1bn in loan. Before this said inflow, country’s reserves had been falling since the beginning of FY18.

In July 2017, there was an outflow of $1.55bn which brought down SBP reserves to $14.587bn from $16.144bn.

The SBP has lost about $5.35bn since the beginning of FY18, which has further aggravated the current account deficit. The country has to use reserves of State Bank to meet the current account deficit which rose to $12bn in the first nine months of 2017-18.

On the other hand, the holdings of commercial banks increased by $145m to $6.268bn.

Published in Dawn, May 18th, 2018