(August 06, 2022)
Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, and All Karachi Industrial Alliance and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain on Saturday said the surprising stability of the rupee is a very positive development which will restore the confidence of local and foreign investors.
The retreat of the dollar will also give a relief to the public for which the government must initiate efforts, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that there has been a reduction of fifteen hundred billion rupees in the country’s loans and the increase in the value of the rupee has broken the backs of speculators and hoarders who lost billions of rupees in a few days.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that due to the sharp increase in the value of the dollar, many people had started investing heavily in this currency.
A large number of importers and exporters had also collected millions of dollars which was like playing with the future of the country for profit.
A few days back there were no lockers available with the bank to keep dollars but now no one is willing to buy dollars and capital is flowing back into the market, he added.
He observed that the stability of the rupee shows that the appreciation of the dollar was not natural but the work of profiteers and that the government has no control over these speculators which is unfortunate.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that in the month of July, the value of the rupee fell by 15 percent, which was a record since 1989, after which a joint statement by the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank said that this fall is temporary and the situation will improve in a few months, but no one believed this claim.
Now, not only the monitoring of foreign exchange companies and banks has been started, but many banks involved in profiteering have also been fined billions of rupees, which was necessary to save the country’s economy.
He said that imports have dropped to $4.9 billion this year from $7.9 billion in July a year ago due to government initiatives that have reduced current account and trade deficit and stabilized the rupee, for which Finance Minister Miftah Ismail deserves credit.
He noted that sectors are still in crisis that must be supported and that one of the reasons for the crisis in Pakistan is the vehicle manufacturing companies, which if forced to manufacture parts in Pakistan will save five billion dollars annually.
