🇵🇰🇨🇳 Ahmed & Qazi advised the lenders, with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China serving as arranger and facility agent, as Pakistan legal counsel towards the successful close of three single currency term facilities of RMB 2.79 billion, RMB 3.72 billion and RMB 2.79, aggregating to RMB 9.3 billion (equivalent to US$ 1.3 billion) to the Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan.
In recent weeks, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves dipped to single digits (roughly US$9 billion). This purpose of these facilities is to push up the forex reserves to the double digits and to help close out the fiscal year with sufficient reserves to meet the IMF’s year-end requirement of US$14 billion.
With the fiscal year-end fast approaching, the facilities were successfully disbursed on the last day of the fiscal year. One particularly unique element of this deal is that the facilities have been provided in Renminbi instead of USD, as part of China’s overall policy to decouple from the US Dollar.
A&Q team was led by Nazif Ahmed, who was assisted by a number of associates at the firm. Norton Rose Fulbright, led by Neha Khosla, acted as English law counsel for the lenders to this deal. Reuters: https://lnkd.in/dfBGNg43
