ISLAMABAD, May 31: Pakistan’s public debt witnessed an increase of 12.3 per cent in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, reaching a total of Rs12.024 trillion this year from Rs10.709 trillion last year.

In 2008, according to the Economic Survey, the public debt was just Rs6.055 trillion, which doubled in the past four years.Aside from the huge increase in volume, value of Pakistan’s debt also multiplied because of rupee losing value against major international currencies, especially dollar.

The public debt as percentage of the GDP stood at 58.2 per cent by the end of March 2012 compared to 55.5 per cent of the GDP during the same period last year, placing Pakistan on a very conformable position.

With the accumulation of public debt, debt-servicing requirement also went up during the period under review. In July-March 2012, the government paid out Rs719 billion servicing on public debt as against the budgeted amount of Rs1.034 trillion for the whole year. Of the total public debt, Pakistan’s external debt and liabilities stock stood at Rs60.3 billion as in March 2012.

During this period, an additional $179 million was added to the volume of external debt.

Servicing of external debt and liabilities during the first nine months of the fiscal year 2012 amounted to $3.567 billion.

Of these, $1.692 billion were paid against the principal amount while interest payments stood at $633 million during the period under review.

An amount of $1.243 billion was paid in the first nine months for re-scheduling of loans, which were about to mature.

The survey claims that external debt servicing as a percentage of foreign exchange earnings is declining since fiscal year 2010 and stood at 11.4 per cent during the year 2011 owing to strong worker remittances and positive turn-around in export earnings.

But contrary to this, the current level of servicing is bound to increase as IMF-SBA repayments initiate in fiscal year 2012 for next two years, which require serious efforts to enhance the export earnings.

The structure of public debt also experienced changes in the last four years.

The government has increasingly focused on domestic part owing to non-availability of sufficient external financing.

Domestic borrowing inched up in share from 46.6 per cent in the fiscal year 1990 to 59.9 per cent at the end of March 2012.

In value terms, domestic public debt reached $7.206 trillion in 2011-12 from Rs3.275 trillion, showing an increase of 120 per cent.