KARACHI: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Muhammad Aurangzeb met a delegation from S&P Global’s top sovereign ratings officials on Thursday, highlighting Pakistan’s gradually improving macroeconomic indicators and progress on structural reforms aimed at strengthening the country’s creditworthiness.
S&P Global Ratings is one of the world’s three largest credit rating agencies, alongside Moody’s and Fitch Ratings. Its credit ratings assess a government’s ability to meet its debt obligations and are closely watched by global investors since they influence borrowing costs and access to international capital markets.
In July 2025, S&P upgraded Pakistan’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating to B- from CCC+, assigning it a stable outlook.
“Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb held a meeting today with a delegation from S&P Global Ratings comprising Mr. YeeFarn PHUA, Director, Sovereign Ratings, and Ms. Giulia Filocca, Associate Director, Sovereign Ratings, to discuss Pakistan’s sovereign credit profile, macroeconomic outlook, and progress under the Government’s comprehensive economic reform agenda,” the finance ministry said in a statement.
“The Finance Minister also underscored Pakistan’s improving public debt profile, highlighting the sustained decline in the debt-to-GDP ratio, the slowest pace of central government debt growth in around 15 years, active debt management through liability management operations and debt buybacks, extension of the maturity profile of domestic debt, historically lower fiscal deficits, and record primary surpluses,” it added.
Aurangzeb highlighted improvements in Pakistan’s macroeconomic fundamentals, including stronger economic growth, sustained fiscal consolidation and greater resilience in the external sector supported by the government’s FY2026-27 budget.
He also cited lower inflation, higher foreign exchange reserves, renewed investor confidence and stronger fiscal and external indicators amid a challenging regional and global environment.
The minister told the delegation that reforms supported under the International Monetary Fund’s Extended Fund Facility and Resilience and Sustainability Facility remained on track, with Pakistan continuing to engage with the IMF, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other development partners.
The statement said the S&P delegation acknowledged Pakistan’s economic progress and appreciated the government’s commitment to fiscal discipline, debt sustainability, external resilience and structural reforms.
The government has said that it plans to broaden its access to international capital markets through Panda bonds, Eurobonds and other commercial borrowing as part of a strategy to diversify its financing sources and reshape its external debt profile without increasing overall external debt.
Pakistan completed its inaugural $250 million sovereign Panda bond issuance in China’s domestic bond market in May and has said it plans additional Panda bond and Eurobond issuances.
In its assessments earlier this year, S&P Global Market Intelligence projected Pakistan’s economy to strengthen further in 2026 while also warning that the country remains among the Asia-Pacific economies most vulnerable to external shocks, including disruptions stemming from the US-Iran conflict because of its reliance on imported energy and external financing.
