Pakistan Statutory late-payment interest
Pakistan Statutory late-payment interest: no single figure applies. The reason is set out below, cited to the governing instrument. Last checked against the official source on 10 Aug 2026.
Pakistan fixes no statutory interest rate on money debts — interest is discretionary under the Interest Act 1839 and section 34 of the Code of Civil Procedure — and the Constitution now requires riba to be eliminated completely before 1 January 2028.
Compare statutory interest rate across all 28 Asian countries →
| Current value | structured — see the API |
|---|---|
| In force from | — |
| Official source | Interest Act 1839 (Act No. XXXII of 1839) s. 1: the Court 'may, if it shall think fit, allow interest to the creditor at a rate not exceeding the current rate of interest'; Constitution of Pakistan Art. 38(f) as substituted by the Constitution (Twenty-sixth Amendment) Act 2024: the State shall 'eliminate riba completely before the first day of January, 2028' |
| Last verified | 2026-08-10 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
REFUSAL — no Pakistani statute fixes a rate a creditor can claim on an overdue debt, and the legal basis for charging interest at all is under a constitutional sunset. The general instruments give discretion without a number: the Interest Act 1839 lets a court allow interest 'at a rate not exceeding the current rate of interest' — from the due date where the debt is payable at a certain time under a written instrument, otherwise only from the date of a written demand — and section 34 of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908 leaves pre-decree and post-decree interest at such rate as the court deems reasonable. THE CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION IS THE MATERIAL FACT FOR ANY FORWARD-LOOKING USE: the Federal Shariat Court held on 28 April 2022 that riba in all its forms is repugnant to Islam, struck down the interest-bearing provisions of the principal financial statutes, and directed that the interest-based system be replaced; the Constitution (Twenty-sixth Amendment) Act 2024 then hard-wired the timetable by substituting Article 38(f) to require riba to be eliminated completely before 1 January 2028. Statutory references to interest are being repealed or converted to Shariah-compliant equivalents on that timetable, so any Pakistani interest figure carries a known expiry and should not be treated as stable past 2027. THE ONE PUBLISHED FIGURE IS SECTOR-SPECIFIC: under section 3 of the Financial Institutions (Recovery of Finances) Ordinance 2001 a defaulting customer of a financial institution is liable, from the date of default until realisation, for that institution's COST OF FUNDS as certified by the State Bank of Pakistan from time to time, and a Banking Court decree must provide for it. That is a bank-recovery measure available only to financial institutions — an ordinary trade creditor cannot invoke it, and it is not a general legal interest rate. Provincial money-lending laws and the Usurious Loans Act 1918 let courts reopen excessive bargains but set no rate. No civil/commercial split exists in the general law.
Get it programmatically
curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/pk/statutory-interest
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/pk/statutory-interest/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/pk/statutory-interestOther Pakistan series: SBP Policy (Target) Rate · General Sales Tax (GST) · VAT registration threshold · Minimum wage (unskilled worker, monthly) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions
The same figure elsewhere: Philippines · Qatar · Saudi Arabia · Singapore · South Korea · all 28