April 20, 2022 (MLN): After economic hardship, the Pakistani rupee (PKR) continued its downward journey in the interbank market as the currency closed trading at PKR 185.92 against the US dollar, falling sharply from 1. 5 rupees, compared to yesterday’s close of PKR 184.44 per USD.
The rupee endured a volatile trading session with rates recorded in a range of 65 paisa per USD, showing an intraday high bid of 186.10 and an intraday low bid of 185.55.
According to money market experts, local unity is under severe pressure from a range of economic challenges, including depletion of foreign exchange reserves, direct divestments abroad, mounting budget deficits and raging commodity prices.
In addition, Pakistan paid $2.5 billion to China in the last week of March, but the said amount has not yet been rolled back in terms of rollover.
Higher import payments due to the 96% increase in petroleum products and crude oil imports have put pressure on the domestic unit.
Meanwhile, petroleum product imports totaled $14.8 billion in 9MFY22.
From July 21 to date, the local unit has lost Rs 28.38 against the USD. Similarly, the rupee fell by Rs 9.41 in CYTD with the month-to-date (MTD) position showing a decline of 1.32%, according to data collected by Mettis Global.
Over the past 52 weeks, PKR has lost 18.10% against the greenback, hitting its low of 184.44 today and hitting its high of 152.27 on May 7, 2021.
In addition, since its high on May 5, 2021, the local unit has weakened by 8.78% against EUR. While it is down 12.37% against GBP since its high on May 7, 2021.
Additionally, PKR’s performance has remained bleak against major currencies in the last seven sessions as it weakened 2.29%, 2.21%, 2.21%, 2.10%, 1.55%, 0.41 % and 0.28% against GBP, SAR, AED, EUR CNY, CHF and JPY respectively.
Within the open market, PKR traded at 186/187.50 per USD.
Meanwhile, the currency lost 2.1 rupees against the British pound as the day’s closing rate was PKR 241.97 per GBP, while the previous session ended at PKR 239.92 per GBP.
Similarly, the value of PKR weakened by rupees 2.2 against EUR, which closed today at PKR 201.11 in the interbank market.
On the other hand, within the money market, the overnight repo rate was 11.40/11.60 percent by the end of the session, while the 1-week rate was 12.15/12.25 percent.
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