Daily Times

Pakistani rupee snapped a losing streak against the US dollar after 19 consecutive sessions and recovered to 184.68 on Friday. The State Bank of Pakistan said in a statement that the dollar opened at Rs188.18 in the interbank market and closed at Rs184.68 after losing Rs3.50 (+1.9 percent).

The central bank’s bold move to raise the policy rate by 250bps a day earlier provided support to rupee and it made a decent recovery against the US dollar. The SBP on Thursday sharply increased the key policy rate by 2.5 percent to 12.25 percent in an unscheduled monetary policy committee meeting. Moreover, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled to end political uncertainty in the country, which also helped stabilise the rupee.

The rupee set 18 all-time lowest levels in the interbank market against the greenback during the last 20 sessions. Overall, the rupee shed Rs0.69 against the US dollar during this week, while the local unit devalued by Rs27.25 during the ongoing fiscal year 2021-22 and Rs8.23 during the current year 2022.

The SBP reported a day earlier that foreign exchange reserves of the country fell to $17.477 billion by the week ended April 1, 2022. The country’s foreign exchange reserves hit an all-time high of $27.228 billion on August 27, 2021 and have declined $9.78 billion since then, owing to demand for the dollars for import payments and external repayment of government debt. The foreign exchange reserves are declining for the last eight consecutive weeks and recorded a fall of $6.24 billion since February 4, 2022, when the reserves were at $23.721 billion.

The official forex reserves of the central bank, which is the benchmark for calculating the financial strength of a country, also fell to $11.32 billion, which are less than two months of import cover. The import bill for the month of March 2022 stood at $6.186 billion, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.