Govt tasks FIA to curb dollar hoarding, speculative currency trade

Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry on Friday announced that the government has decided to launch a "full-fledged" operation against the hoarding of US dollars and speculative currency trade in the country.

Fawad said the government has directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to launch the operation in coordination with the State Bank of Pakistan and the Ministry of Finance.

Government has directed FIA to launch a full fledged operation against Dollar hoarding, and speculative currency trade the operation is being launched in coordination with State Bank and ministry of Finance

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) April 5, 2019

The announcement came hours after Finance Minister Asad Umar ruled out a further devaluation of the rupee, which has lost about 25 per cent of its value over the past year, urging people to invest in the stock market and not waste money buying dollars.

Talking to a group of journalists in Islamabad, the minister said that speculations in the local money market had sparked the dollar value against rupee and the situation was worsened by the fake news being spread on social media.

Umar said there would be no further devaluation of the rupee as the SBP had categorically made it clear that the supply and demand of dollar against the rupee had reached its equilibrium level.

He reiterated said that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had made no demands to set the exchange rate or to devalue the rupee.