When you have a situation where a patient has heart disease, liver disease and pains, you first have to get things in working order. In 1999-2000, the country’s debt servicing obligations amounted to $ 7.8 billion and there was no way we could repay such huge amount of money out of our foreign exchange earnings.
This amounted to 60 to 70 percent of foreign exchange earnings including the SBP purchases from kerb market. We made all possible efforts to ensure that no payments to foreign portfolio investors or foreign companies such as Hubco were stopped so that the country’s credibility which was very low at the time could be restored.