Ahmed Mukhtar Naqshbandi
KARACHI: Pakistani rupee continued to depreciate steeply in the interbank market Friday, trading at Rs266.6 per dollar in the morning, down from Rs11.17 or 4.58 percent from Thursday.
This is one of the largest falls in the one-day trading session. By this fall billions of dollars of debt is multiplied, without any additional loan. But it has enhanced the burden of foreign debt payments.
According to the data shared by the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (Ecap), the local currency’s value declined by Rs24.54 to a record low to Rs255.43 in the interbank a day earlier, the largest single-day depreciation in both absolute and percentage terms since the new exchange rate system was introduced in 1999.
The dollar was already traded in the grey market at similar rates bu the inter-bank was pegged and kept the rates lower for the last many weeks
Cap on dollar-PKR exchange rate removed
The steep devaluation occurred after the government removed an unofficial cap on the USD-PKR exchange rate to revive the stalled International Monetary Fund loan programme.
