The Economics Times : Oct 09, 2019, 04:31 PM
ISLAMABAD: The Imran Khan-led Pakistani government has accumulated a record public debt of PKR 7,509 billion during its first year in power, as per local media reports.The foreign debt incurred by Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government from August 2018 to August 2019 stood at PKR 2,804 billion, while the internally accumulated figure stood at PKR 4,705 billion, Geo News reported.As per the State Bank of Pakistan, the total public debt stood at PKR 31.786 trillion at the end of June 2019.Additionally, the government has projected public debt to increase by 47 per cent to PKR 45.57 trillion in five years.In April this year, Pakistan Finance Minister Asad Umar had said that Pakistan's basic debts have reached alarmingly high levels and that the country is near bankruptcy.According to the State Bank data, a 1.43 per cent surge was noticed in the public debt of Pakistan in merely first two months of the current fiscal year.The government's tax collection in the first quarter of the current fiscal was Rs 960 billion while the target was Rs 1 trillion, the report said.The Pakistani PM has paid a visit to many countries seeking financial help for Islamabad's ballooning economic crisis ever since coming to power last year.Several countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, have provided bailout packages to Islamabad in a bid to save its crippling economy.