China To Pakistan's Rescue Again: Provides $1.5 Billion To Help Pay Back $2 Billion Saudi Debt

Once again coming to the rescue of the battered Pakistani Government, China has bailed out the former by agreeing to immediately provide it with $1.5 billion sum to repay a $2 billion debt to Saudi Arabia, reports Economic Times.

Of the total $2 billion which Pakistan has to pay back to Saudi Arabia, the nation is likely to return a billion dollars soon, while another billion-dollar sum is due in January and will be returned later.

This time around, instead of lending the sum to Pakistan, China has rather decided to augment the size of an existing 2011 bilateral currency swap agreement (CSA) between the two nations by $1.5 billion. With this, the total size of the currency swap agreement has been increased to $4.5 billion.

While the two nations had signed the CSA in December 2011 intending to promote bilateral trade and finance direct investments, Pakistan has used the facility since then to pay back its debts. The initial CSA was of a $1.5 billion size and had been signed for three years.

Later, the facility was extended for another three years in December 2014. And, this was followed by another extension for a period of three years in May 2018, with the size being raised to $3 billion.