ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Ministry of Finance has contradicted a news report carried by Bloomberg News Agency on debt situation of Pakistan and termed it a misleading and not based on facts.
In a statement issued by the Ministry of Finance here Tuesday said that Bloomberg News Agency had carried a misleading report on the debt situation of Pakistan.
“It is unfortunate that despite repeated interaction to correct the factual errors in their report, the agency choose to ignore the clarification and write a report not based on facts”, the statement of the Finance Ministry said.
The statement further said that the report had thus creating an impression about Pakistan debt profile i.e. conjectural and contrary to the actual situation.
The Ministry’s statement in continuation of its earlier clarification, following factual information noted that the headline implied that Pakistan’s External debt of $50 billion was maturing in one year, which was factually not correct.
The statement further clarified that Pakistan’s total external public debt was $50.9 billion as on End-June 2015, maturing over next 40 years.
It further clarified that out of this, around $4.0 billion was maturing in 2016 and $2.8 billion in 2017.
The Finance Ministry said that the External public debt also included Eurobonds of $4.6 billion out of which only $500 million was maturing in March 2016 and $750 million in June 2017.
“The default risk is never on domestic debt but only on external debt therefore the headline number of $50 billion is highly misleading. Such a statement from a highly respected news agency is disconcerting”, the Finance Ministry statement said.
It added that the obligations maturing during the year were fully covered by reserves as well as the planned build up during the year.
Pakistan, the statement said had successfully tapped international capital markets three times during the last 30 months and each time it had received oversubscription to its offers.
Source: APP
