July 14, 2022 (MLN): After an announcement of an imminent agreement reached between Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Pakistani Rupee started showing signs of recovery in early trade on Thursday as it gained 1.1 rupees against the US Dollar (USD) in an interbank market.
The rupee was quoted at 209.01/209.51 [10:20 PST] when compared to the previous close of 210.10.
IMF team, led by Nathan Porter has reached a staff-level agreement (SLA) with the Pakistan authorities for the conclusion of the combined seventh and eighth reviews of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF)-supported program.
Nathan Porter, IMF Mission Chief on Wednesday that Pakistan will receive $1.177 billion after the approval of IMF’s Executive Board, bringing total disbursements under the program to about $4.2 billion.
Additionally, in order to support program implementation and meet the higher financing needs in FY23, as well as catalyze additional financing, the IMF Board will consider an extension of the EFF until end-June 2023 and an augmentation of access by SDR 720 million that will bring the total access under the EFF to about $7 billion, he added.
This latest development brought optimism to the forex market which will take the central bank's foreign exchange reserves to a sustainable level as this IMF bailout program will be a catalyst to unlock external funding from other sources.
Yesterday, the local unit witnessed a massive fall of 2.2 rupees against the US dollar in a single session in the interbank market due to elevated demand for dollars amid the payment of import bills.
