pakistan's foreign currency reserves are about 15 or 16 billion or so.
What they say on news is that if all our exports are blocked and all means of earning foreign exchange for pakistan are banned etc, then with this 16billion we can import stuff as usual for about 6 months.
But thats not exactly true. If sanctions are put, government will HAVE to take measures to make sure we dont run out of foreign exchange. they will block imports etc to make sure we dont loose that foreign exchange. But if they block imports, we will have to manufacture those goods ourself. That could be good for the economy, given we have all the resources required.
Remember, fuel etc is not everything. You need a whole bunch of different resources to run a country completely independently.
That is why the strongest countries in the world are the ones that have the greatest amount of land. more land means you have higher chances of finding resources. That means you have more variety of resources. This is how china, russia and usa are/were the strongest countries.
But pakistan is not that much worried about sanctions, cuz we have china to help us in every single thing. Otherwise, pakistan would not have been wat it is today. We have absolutely no industrial strength of our own. We have yet to make a simple engine our self. We dont even have the metallurgical facilities to produce the kind of metals required either. Most of the parts in our nuclear bombs are also most probably not made in pakistan completely. Most of the stuff probably comes from china. We just have the brains(qadir/samar) to design/test/assemble these things.
China trade is loosing us money. Last time i checked we were loosing several billions to china. Trade with developing economies similar to ours is increasing. That could help us alot. Examples of such trade is with Afghanistan, african countries and few "backwards" central asian countries.
The advantage we get by trading with these economies is that their standards are also $hit, just like ours, poor regulation and $hit industry there as well. So our industry is still better compared to theirs and we are exporting to them and these exports are expected to rise sharply.
Trade with western economies is a little different. They see it as "sadqa". Or charity. A couple of billions is no big deal to them. There are some "safeguards" for developing $hit economies like ours in eurozone's trade policies and I think WTO as well (im not completely sure). That allows us to export to them more easily. Its just their "meherbani" that they allow us to trade there. in return we do political favors like "war on terrorism" and osama bin laden drama etc...
Pakistan's best bet is to trade with its less developed neighbors. We can dominate the afghan markets. And most afghans dont hate Pakistan, its the gov. that hates us. Many pakistani companies are trading there and are doing good business. Similarly Iran business also has potential. There's other countries as well. India has political problems and China doesn't need our stuff.
Remittances, I dont think are going to fall much in coming times. People are moving abroad in large numbers and many of those are very patriotic type people who have recently just "had enough". Immigration are on the rise. These are wealthy people and are expected to send fair amount of money back into pakistan as well. They are going abroad, tasting some good life, then realizing business abroad too slow. Then send money back to pakistan in maybe some years for investment. Pakistan is good for business in coming years. Theres alot of potential. Bad times are the good times for investment. Pakistan has a bright future if you don't loose all hope.