Web Desk (LTN NEWS): During Thursday morning’s trade on the interbank market, the Pakistani rupee got back another Rs2.19 per dollar.
According to the Forex Association of Pakistan, the local currency was worth Rs221.75 per dollar at 9:46 a.m., up 0.98 percent from yesterday’s closing rate of Rs223.94 (FAP).
The rupee was close to its all-time low of Rs239.71 on September 22. Since then, it has been going up. The last nine trading sessions have gone up Rs15.77 or 6.58 percent.
The Pakistani rupee has been getting stronger for nine straight business days. On Wednesday, it went up by another 0.76%, or Rs1.70, against the US dollar, reaching a new one-month high of Rs223.94 on the interbank market.
The rupee has kept getting stronger against the dollar because exporters have kept selling dollars on forwarding counters to avoid big losses if the rupee goes above Rs200 in the coming days and weeks.
Previously, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said the rupee was undervalued and should be worth less than Rs200.
Even though eight banks are being investigated for allegedly manipulating the rupee to a record low of around Rs240, the rupee has stayed on an upward trend. In July 2022, when Miftah Ismail was finance minister, the rupee fell to that level, which was the lowest it had ever been.
Read Rupee keeps getting better against Dollar
Later, the rupee got better quickly, but it went back down. So, it dropped again by 12%, or Rs25, over the next 15 working days. In September, just a few days before Dar returned to Pakistan from self-exile, it was almost at its all-time low.
The most surprising thing about the rupee’s recent rally is that it has continued to recover against the US dollar even though almost all other major global currencies, including the euro and the British pound, are losing against the greenback.
Even though OPEC and other oil exporting and producing countries cut fuel production by 1.1 million barrels per day and international oil prices went back to over $90 per barrel, the rupee has kept increasing.
Third, the country’s foreign exchange reserves have continued to fall, even though it got a $1 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about a month ago. This is a very bad sign.
In September, the value of the country’s exports fell by 1%. More importantly, textiles’ top exporting sector has started to close partly because there isn’t enough good cotton. This is because flash floods washed away many crops in the fields.
