Karachi: Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (ECAP) reported a disparity between the dollar rate on Wednesday which was Rs107.30-60 in open market compared to Rs105.38-48 in the inter-bank market.
The higher differential between open and inter-bank market rates gives sway to illegal transactions via the hundi and hawala system, reported a local newspaper.
According to National Bank President Saeed Ahmed, illegal system of transactions like hawala and hundi were damaging remittances as a huge number of overseas Pakistani’s are lacking in knowledge about proper systems.
ECAP General Secretary Zafar Paracha was off the view that the actual reason for dollar appreciation was political uncertainty, keeping aside other factors. He added negative news regarding the country’s financial condition and depleting foreign exchange reserves, were impacting the exchange rate and devaluation rumours of PKR were unsettling market forces.
Paracha said due to rising disparity between open and inter-bank market rates was encouraging people to redirect remittances via illegal channels.
Remittances nosedived 34pc during September in comparison to August, which the currency dealers termed as ‘shocking.’
Our forex reserves are not just money reserves, they are our political debits. They are used by the lender countries to manipulate our way of governing ourselves and whenever the lenders want our government to do something for them, they just throttle our forex reserves and we are putty in their hands. Just now they want us to desist from adopting CEPEC because we are likely to become financially independent as a result of this project. Just imagine, UK has a national debt of 1,5 trillion pounds, and the US has 20 trillion dollars debt, nothing happens to them and their currency value gets stronger. We, even if we have a debt of one paisa, will always be strangulated by the lenders. My counsel to our government is, never devalue rupee or else escalation of poverty will get out of hand.
The above article is right in pointing out that majority of our citizens seeking employment abroad do not know how to send money home through proper channel of banks. On the other hand, the Hundi agents approach them pro-actively and tell them the ease and benefit of sending money via hundi and hawala and provide them with the facility of instant transfer of their money home to their loved ones. Needless to say that majority of our expatriate man power is undereducated. It should be the duty of our emigration authorities to teach them the method of sending money to Pakistan through proper banking channels and tell them the benefits it brings to the country. In fact there should be some compulsory training classes held by our immigration department to teach them the method and values of sending money home via proper channels.