KARACHI: The rupee recovered for the third consecutive session on Thursday, as the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) announced that it had received the funds from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), besides investment commitments from the friendly countries, dealers said.
The exchange rate witnessed a gain of 15 paisas to Rs218.60 against the dollar from the previous day’s closing of Rs218.75 in the interbank foreign exchange market. The local currency fell to the historic low of Rs239.94 against the dollar on July 28, 2022.
The analysts said that the disbursement of $1.16 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) along with announcements of friendly countries for investment during the year, and reduced oil imports due to declining demand also strengthened the local currency.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday, said it had received inflows amounting to $1.16 billion from the IMF as loan tranche of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) programme.
The inflows from the IMF will help improve the foreign exchange reserves of the central bank and will also facilitate realisation of other planned inflows from multilateral and bilateral sources, the central bank added.
Pakistan has received financial commitments worth $37 billion in new foreign funding during the fiscal year 2023 from countries including China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Additionally, the IMF board has also approved an extension of the EFF till June 2023 instead of September 2022. The board also approved augmentation of access by $1 billion, bringing the total access to $6.5 billion.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country fell $91 million to $13.522 billion by the week ended August 19, 2022. The foreign exchange reserves of the country were at $13.613 billion a week ago, i.e., August 12, 2022.
The official foreign exchange reserves of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) witnessed a decline of $87 million to $7.81 billion by the week ended August 19, 2022 as against $7.897 billion a week ago.
The country’s current account deficit rose 531 per cent to over $17 billion during the fiscal year 2022 due to massive increase in goods import bill. Overall, the current account deficit was $17.4 billion during the fiscal year 2022, compared with $2.8 billion in the fiscal year 2021, depicting an increase of $14.6 billion.
The local currency remained under pressure since the start of the current fiscal year. The rupee lost Rs13.75 or 6.71 per cent from Rs204.85 to dollar on June 30, 2022 to the current level of Rs218.60.
At the open market, the buying and selling of the dollar was recorded at Rs216 and Rs219 at 4:15pm PST.
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