With the revival of the IMF talks, the Pakistani rupee has come out of its tumbling jinx as the local unit gained 89 paisas in the interbank trading on Wednesday, but it proved short-lived as the greenback towards the end regained its lost value, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.
According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the rupee buffeted otherwise massively by the mighty US dollar last week appreciated by 89 paisas in the morning but could not sustain it and by the end of the day it lost 94 paisas at Rs268.83.
After losing its value for several days, the Pakistani rupee on Tuesday registered a minor gain of Rs1.7 against the USD.
The experts are attributing rupee’s recovery to export inflows as supply of dollars has improved in the market with the exporters offloading their dollars due to higher rates after the removal of unofficial exchange rate cap.
Besides this, the resumption of IMF talks and prospects of releasing the stalled tranche by the Fund have revived market’s confidence in rupee.
During his talks with the IMF mission yesterday, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar assured it of Pakistan’s commitment to work with it for reaching an agreement to complete the ninth review under the Extended Fund Facility.
The finance minister briefed the mission on the fiscal and economic reforms and measures being taken by the government in different sectors including bridging the fiscal gap, exchange rate stability and in energy sector for the betterment of the economy.
He said reforms are being introduced in power sector and a high-level committee has been formed for devising modalities to offset the menace of circular debt in gas sector.
Left with only $3.68 billion in foreign exchange reserves, Pakistan barely has enough to cover three weeks of imports and desperately needs the IMF to release the next $1bn tranche of its bailout programme to head off a potential default. The removal of the price cap on the exchange rate was one of the conditions set by the global lender for the revival of talks on the ninth review.
Reporter Ashraf Khan