*LAHORE: *Pakistan is burning through its foreign exchange reserves at thequickest rate across Asia even surpassing Cambodia, an economy less than10th its size.
The country’s forex reserves have fallen by about a fifth in last year totouch $13.5 billion in February and in comparison, Cambodia has witnessed arise in its forex reserves by a third to $11.2 billion in January as perdata from International Monetary Fund, reported *Bloomberg.*
As per Insight Securities, the country’s forex reserves are projected todecline by around $2.2 billon till June this year.
The country is swathed by a balance of payment crisis, rising currentaccount deficit (CAD) which has widened to 50 percent in the first eightmonths of FY 2017-18 to $10.8 billion.
The rise in CAD has been driven by increase in imports as Pakistan’seconomy continues growing at around 5 percent.
Last Tuesday, the central bank allowed the rupee to devaluate against thedollar for the second time since December 2017.
In a comment to *Bloomberg, *Head of economics department at LahoreUniversity of Management Sciences (LUMS), Turab Hussain said “Your hotmoney capital inflows are not coming in. Real conditions of the economy arethat exports are not picking up.”
He added “Bangladesh are the ones that are a stronger economy now.”
As per data collected by *Bloomberg,*Kazakhstan and New Zealand have moreforeign exchange reserves and are smaller economies than Pakistan.