KARACHI: Despite suffering heavy losses this week, the Pakistani rupee made a partial recovery of Rs2.6 to Rs156.7 in the interbank.
The rupee appreciated in the second session of intraday trading on Friday. The mark-to-market mid rates, which is an average rate for the day was Rs 158.97. It is expected that USD/PKR will open at 157.00 on Monday.
On the contrary, the dollar remained steady at Rs158.5 in the open market.
From Monday onwards, the rupee shed its value from Rs154.25 to climb Rs157.9 and it lost Rs3.65 in a single day. The dollar continued to surge and reached Rs159.3 before losing some value on Friday.
According to the informed sources, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) intervened at 4 pm on Friday to ensure the stabilisation of the rupee to bring the dollar down to Rs157.25 by pumping liquidity.
The rupee is likely to be under pressure considering the outflow of dollars due to the liquidity concerns of foreign investors. Considering how gold, a safe haven, has not managed to save itself from this liquidity selling spree, the rupee is likely to lose unless an intervention takes place.
Total gross divestment during March 2020 has reached $772.3 million, according to data released by the SBP, as ‘hot money’ leaves the country amid ongoing concerns about the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.
It is expected that by the end of this week, T-bills’ outflows from the Special Convertible Rupee Account (SCRA) will cross $800 million.
Foreign investors divested $166 million net worth of treasury bills (T-bills) on March 12, as per the SCRA, which tracks inflows and outflows from foreign countries.
The net investment in T-bills from July 2019 to date now amounts to $2.327 billion.
