Pakistan secured a substantial increase in external financial inflows during the first eleven months of the fiscal year 2025-26, reflecting a significant shift in its international financing trajectory. According to official data released by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the country accumulated 12.106 billion dollars in foreign assistance between July and May. This represents a stark 75.7 percent expansion when contrasted with the 6.891 billion dollars registered during the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year, highlighting an enhanced reliance on external channels to stabilize domestic fiscal balances.
This recorded July-May baseline explicitly excludes the 2 billion dollars disbursed by the International Monetary Fund across two distinct instalments under its broader 7 billion dollar Extended Fund Facility. Because the State Bank of Pakistan accounts for these specific Extended Fund Facility resources separately, while the Economic Affairs Division focuses on standard tracking and climate-related support, the total volume of international capital entering the country actually exceeded 14.2 billion dollars when combining all reporting mechanisms. A closer examination of the composition of these inflows reveals that international loans drove the vast majority of the growth, rising 76.4 percent to hit 11.97 billion dollars compared to 6.7 billion dollars last year. Conversely, international grants witnessed a contraction, dropping 19 percent from 168 million dollars down to 136 million dollars.
For the entirety of the fiscal year 2026, the federal government set a total foreign inflow target of 19.9 billion dollars, a slight upward adjustment from the 19.4 billion dollar target established during the preceding year. On a month-on-month basis, the financial intake for May settled at 1.03 billion dollars. While this monthly figure marks a noticeable 76.5 percent decline from the 4.4 billion dollars recorded in April, that drop is entirely attributable to the absence of the 3 billion dollars in Saudi deposits that padded the April accounts. When compared directly against May of last year, the current monthly intake is actually 29 percent stronger than the 797 million dollars documented then.
Out of the total 12.106 billion dollars obtained during the eleven-month span, project-specific financing comprised 3 billion dollars, leaving non-project assistance to claim the lion’s share at 9.1 billion dollars. Budgetary support loans specifically generated 7.287 billion dollars against an annual target of 13.5 billion dollars, which had been revised downward from a 15 billion dollar target the year before. Meanwhile, the state successfully utilized the entirety of the 1 billion dollar allocation made available through the Saudi Oil Facility.
Disbursements from multilateral institutions, omitting the International Monetary Fund, reached 3.1 billion dollars against a full-year projection of 5 billion dollars. This performance lagged behind the 3.367 billion dollars gathered from identical sources during the same window last year. On the bilateral front, inflows excluding fixed deposits from core strategic partners reached 3 billion dollars, vastly outperforming the annual projection of 1.36 billion dollars due to supplementary Saudi time deposits. Strip those specific deposits away, and standard bilateral sovereign inflows amounted to 1.3 billion dollars, which includes 1.012 billion dollars in regular financing from Saudi Arabia. Combined multilateral and bilateral funding reached 4.426 billion dollars against a 6.4 billion dollar annual goal. Finally, capital markets provided a boost as the state raised 1 billion dollars via Eurobonds, alongside a 202 million dollar commercial loan from Standard Chartered Bank London, and 421 million dollars via the International Monetary Fund climate resilience facility.
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