Steps demanded to contain fall in Forex Reserves

President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President AKIA, Secretary General of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Wednesday demanded steps to contain fall in the forex reserves which can hit exchange rate and creditworthiness of the country.

Increased imports and decreasing exports, reduced remittances and dried up foreign investment has become a threat to foreign exchange reserved just eleven months after the culmination of the IMF programme, he said.

He said that Pakistan’s forex reserved stood at 14.3 billion dollars on August 04 in which 10 billion dollars were with the central bank while the rest were with the commercial banks etc.

Mian Zahid Hussain said that monthly import bill is a little less than five billion dollars while some international institutions would not deal with a country that has forex reserves sufficient for imports of three months.

Pakistan may reach to that stage by the end of the current month or in the beginning of September which will be a blow to the reputation of the country, he feared.

The business leader said that exports have jumped over 10 percent in the first month of the current fiscal while remittances improved by sixteen percent but it isn’t enough as foreign investment has almost dried up.

He demanded more steps to discourage unnecessary imports, lure expatriates to invest in the country, and try to bring stole funds worth billions of dollars stashed in foreign banks.

Erosion in the exchange rate should not be an option, he demanded.