China's EXIM Bank rolls over $2.4bn loan to Pakistan
Representational image of dollars. — AFP Finance Minister Ishaq Dar announced Thursday that the Export-Import Bank of China (EXIM) has rolled over $2.4 billion to Pakistan. This comes as a sigh of relief for the outgoing Pakistan Democratic Movement-led government as it seeks to meet Pakistan's debt payments due next year. In a tweet, Dar said the bank has rolled over the amount for two years, which are due in the next two fiscal years — $1.2 billion in FY24 and the same amount in FY25. "Pakistan will make interest payments only in both years," the finance minister, whose government's tenure will end in August, said. The relief comes around a week after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had announced that the same financial institution — Exim Bank of China — had rolled over $600 million to Pakistan. This amount was in addition to the more than $5 billion in loans that Pakistan's iron-brother China had rolled over in the last three months, the prime minister had said. ...