This paper discusses how poor debt management combined with the policies of donor agencies (particularly the IMF) have brought on the present domestic and foreign debt crises. The paper presents a qualitative account of the debt in Pakistan and then analyzes the debt data using various debt burden indicators. After the analysis of the economic and social costs of debt overhang in Pakistan, it is found that net foreign resource flows to the private and public sectors tended to crowd out private and public savings respectively and that public savings is crowded out by resource flows from the private sector to the public sector. Finally, the results of the paper find that the resource allocation between development and non‐development expenditure did not depend on whether government expenditure was financed by revenues or government borrowing and that more resources are directed towards development activity when government expenditure is financed by foreign resource flows rather than domestic resource flows.