Rupee weakens by 28 paisas on demand for import, corporate payments

Rupee weakens by 28 paisas on demand for import, corporate payments

KARACHI: The Pak Rupee weakened by 28 paisas against dollar on Monday owing to higher demand of greenback on opening of market after weekly holidays.

The rupee ended Rs166.63 to the dollar from last Friday’s closing of Rs166.35 in interbank foreign exchange market.

Currency experts said that the market was reopened after two weekly holidays which escalated the demand of the foreign currency for import and corporate payments.

They said that improved foreign exchange reserves and lower import demand to help the rupee to gain in coming days.

The official reserves held by the SBP increased by $811 million to $12.042 billion by week ended July 03, 2020 as compared with $11.231 billion a week ago.

The SBP attributed the increase in reserves to proceeds of $1,000 million as GOP loan disbursement from China.

During the week, SBP also made government external debt payments of $ 231.2 million.

The currency experts said that the lower import bill also helped the rupee to make gain.

According to Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) the import bill of the country fell by 18.6 percent to $44.57 billion as compared with $54.76 billion in the preceding fiscal year.

This helped the country to curtail the trade deficit for the year. The trade deficit of the country shrank by 27 percent to $23.18 billion during fiscal year 2019/2020 as compared with the deficit of $31.8 billion in the preceding fiscal year.