PKR remains under stress, settles at 227.93 per USD

January 11, 2023 (MLN): Continuing its downward journey, the Pakistani rupee (PKR) on Wednesday settled the trading session at PKR 227.93 per USD, compared to the previous close of PKR 227.88 per USD.

Within today’s session, the local unit traded in a band of 10 paisa per USD showing an intraday high bid and low offer of 227.90 while in the open market, PKR was traded at 235.65/238 per USD.

Rising economic woes have kept the local unit under pressure as the country’s foreign exchange is depleting sharply and at the same time, no foreign inflows are being credited to the central bank’s account.

The market remained shacky on the newsflows wherein it was reported that the government is considering accessing the foreign exchange held by commercial banks in the wake of melting SBP reserves.

However, in today’s news conference, the Federal Minister of Finance and Revenue Senator Ishaq Dar denied the aforestated statement and termed it as misconstrued, misinterpreted, and malafide, propaganda.

He further clarified that national foreign exchange reserves always include forex held with SBP and Commercial Banks.

Pakistan is moving towards improvement in its forex reserves position in the near future, he added.

In FYTD, PKR lost 23.07 rupees or 10.13%, while it plummeted by 0.43% against the USD in the last seven sessions, as per data compiled by Mettis Global.

Meanwhile, the currency lost 10 paisa to the Pound Sterling as the day's closing quote stood at PKR 277.14 per GBP, while the previous session closed at PKR 277.04 per GBP.

Similarly, PKR's value weakened by 27 paisa against EUR which closed at PKR 244.93 at the interbank today.

On another note, within the money market, the overnight repo rate towards the close of the session was 15.05%/15.15%, whereas the 1-week rate was 15.25%/15.35%.

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