Declining rupee nears record value, depreciates to Rs236.84 per dollar

Picture source - Reuters

The declining rupee, nearing its record value against the dollar, has depreciated further by Rs0.96 and reached Rs236.84 per dollar.

According to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the rupee closed at Rs236.84 per dollar against yesterday’s close of Rs235.88, showing a 0.41 percent depreciation on Friday.

Malik Bostan, chairman of the Forex Association of Pakistan (FAP), in his comments to local media, has urged the government to impose a ban on the import of non-essential and luxury items saying that the rising import bill had been causing pressure on rupee.

Bostan said that the PKR could fall to Rs250 per dollar if Finance Ministry did not intervene. He said that the friendly countries must be appealed for immediate help to ease the pressure on the rupee. He also said that in the open market the demand of dollar was rising and one factor of the increased demand was start of Umrah season that caused an increase in foreign currency’s demand.

Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) has said that during the first two months of the ongoing fiscal year, there has been witnessed an 11.4 percent increase in the imports of oil and eatables imports of the country. According to PBS data, the imports have increased to $5.08 billion from $4.56 billion a year ago.

Oil imports increased by around seven percent to $3.30 billion in July-August this year compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year. Food imports have gone up from $1.47 billion to $1.78 billion in the two months compared with same months of last year.

According to Mettis Global, the value of the rupee has fallen by 28.7 percent during the last 52 weeks. It reached a record low of 239.94 on July 28 this year.