Today, 1 US $ = 168 PKR and 80 Afghani AFN .bharathp wrote:reports of afg and tsp agreeing to trade in PKR instead of USD.
And, 1 AFN = 2 PKR
(mid-market rates)
Draw your own conclusions..
Today, 1 US $ = 168 PKR and 80 Afghani AFN .bharathp wrote:reports of afg and tsp agreeing to trade in PKR instead of USD.
It is not all earned income. Much of it is in the form of loans.Aditya_V wrote:But still USD 20 Billion is too much for the Pakis
Following the subversive activity by anti-CPEC forces on July 14, Wapda has provided the signature of Pakistan’s regular Army at the Dasu Hydropower project’s site and upgraded its security apparatus up to the satisfaction of Chinese government, but even after almost two months, China’s Gezhouba Group Corporation (CGGC) has not started construction work, which is questionable.
Gezhouba also suspended its construction work at Mohmand Dam site for 10-12 days.
Gezhouba hasn’t started work on Dasu, based on its new ‘illogical’ assertions over some commercial and contractual issues , knowing the fact that these cannot be clubbed with the security issues.
Lt Gen Muzammil Hussain (retd), after being appointed as chairman of Wapda for another tenure, flagged the issue of suspension of construction activities at Dasu
the World Bank Mission is also at the site to know as to why the work was still suspended. The World Bank has committed $700 million loan for the project,” he said.
Wapda will not hesitate to impose the LDs (liquidated damages) on China’s Ghezouba on further delays in the light of WB’s mission’s report.
He said that the Government of Pakistan has provided security cover of regular Pakistan Army and, to this effect, a full brigade has been moved from Mangla.
Wapda has committed to have $2.23 billion from international market lenders. And out of $2.23 billion, Wapda will get the amount in dollars in staggered form. To this effect, Wapda has managed the first tranche of $500 million at interest rate of 7.5 percent through the green Euro Bond
And, there's the problem. Chinis are worried that Wapda (rhymes with lafda) that a second tranche may not be available to lafda to pay the chinis and reimburse their masters in peking. I am shocked that a government in this day and age still borrows at 7.5%. How untrustworthy and unbankable can one get?He also mentioned the EAD gets the loans at 3-4 percent and re-lends them to Wapda and other state-owned companies at 15 percent, which is why the projects’ cost increases a lot.
It will be nice if the Paki rupee could reach a pious 786 to the USD in 5 years time, But the currency has been pretty stable for last 2.5 years with no major depriciation.mody wrote:https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/pa ... hp&pc=U531
Paki Rupee breaches 168 to a dollar. Lahori experts are asking govt to put curbs on imports!!
9 Billion of these reserves belong to Arabs and Chinese.anupmisra wrote:It is not all earned income. Much of it is in the form of loans.Aditya_V wrote:But still USD 20 Billion is too much for the Pakis
Still below Rs 169 it hit last year. How are they maintaining their worthless currency in this narrow band of Rs160 to Rs170 is beyond me. Given the state of affairs in that motheaten country, the ideal valuation of 1 USD should be above Rs 250 pkr.mody wrote:https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/pa ... hp&pc=U531
Paki Rupee breaches 168 to a dollar. Lahori experts are asking govt to put curbs on imports!!
Wait till there is a rush by mango pakis to buy dallaarj in the open market. Similar to their tellibunny neighbors. Today the afghani is trading for 85 (up by 5 since Sept 10).Ambar wrote:How are they maintaining their worthless currency in this narrow band of Rs160 to Rs170 is beyond me.
The rupee-dollar interbank parity is close to the historical high of 168.8 (15 August 2020) this week past with a high of 168. Should this be a source of concern or can it be dismissed as the August/September blues?
A Paki Source - hence Harami: https://www.brecorder.com/news/40119788 ... -otherwiseCould it be because the 5 to 7 million dollar daily inflows from Afghanistan to Pakistan ceased subsequent to the 15 August 2021 Taliban takeover of Kabul? The parity on the day Kabul fell was 163.17 so perhaps the resulting erosion maybe attributed to that event, however, this does not explain the erosion from May 2021 onwards till today.
The rupee has been under pressure since May this year with an increasing import bill causing immense worry among policymakers
Another 0.5% fall on Tuesday meant the Pakistani rupee closed at its all-time low against the US dollar, surpassing 168.44 it registered in August last year, with policymakers left scratching their heads on how to stem the decline of the currency.
As per the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the currency closed at 168.94 against the dollar in the inter-bank market on Tuesday, a decline of Rs0.84 or 0.50%.
The Pakistani currency has lost close to 10% since its recent high on May 14, 2021.
Rising imports have become a major concern
the trade deficit for the two-month period widened 120% to $7.5 billion
In addition, uncertainty in Afghanistan has further raised the pressure on the rupee against the USD
Earlier, dollar inflows to the tune of $4-5 million used to come to Pakistan through Afghanistan on a daily basis, which translated into monthly flows of $150-200mn. But since the recent developments the dollar inflow from Afghanistan to Pakistan has dropped to nil
There. That's the official position.an increase in the prices of commodities such as palm oil, crude oil as well as rise in freight rates have all added to the pressure on the currency
A primitive tribe in the jungle with no interest in modern amenities and nothing worth trading can decide to hold their currency (shells or feathers or whatever) at any arbitrary level of their choosing against gold or USD. It's sort of like that. Pakistanis can't afford much by way of foreign goods & services and they are getting by on what they have locally, for the most part. Any difference is financed by armies of labourers sweating it out in the gulf.anupmisra wrote:Wait till there is a rush by mango pakis to buy dallaarj in the open market. Similar to their tellibunny neighbors. Today the afghani is trading for 85 (up by 5 since Sept 10).Ambar wrote:How are they maintaining their worthless currency in this narrow band of Rs160 to Rs170 is beyond me.
Compare pkr with aghani contracts. That should be an equal equal=equal.yensoy wrote:In the past 100 days, USD-PKR has traded 3 "contracts" and USD-INR has traded 12.5k contracts, that is 4 thousand as many. Not sure if it's a good data point but volume has to be taken into account.
Spot on, and it looks like there was a direct inflow of dollars from Afghanistan (sourced via US funding and aid money etc) to Pakistan, that has now slowed to a trickle.CalvinH wrote:Mashahallah. Up and onwards to glory.
Looks like American help to Afghanistan was keeping Paki economy going. No wonder Pakis are desperately trying to get help for Afghanistan.
More demand for dollars for in Pakistan is also because people in Afghanistan are now seeking dollars as they dont trust Afghani any more. As per traders in Peshawar $1M-$1.5M are being traded everyday and taken to Afghanistan. If transaction in Afghani are not banned PKR will slip even more.
The only way they are surviving is due to regular Gastarbeiter remittances from the ME. But "Moody"ji is working on that too.Ambar wrote:Still below Rs 169 it hit last year. How are they maintaining their worthless currency in this narrow band of Rs160 to Rs170 is beyond me. Given the state of affairs in that motheaten country, the ideal valuation of 1 USD should be above Rs 250 pkr.mody wrote:https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/pa ... hp&pc=U531
Paki Rupee breaches 168 to a dollar. Lahori experts are asking govt to put curbs on imports!!
Combined with consistently increasing prices of basic utilities like electricity, as well as historic levels of food inflation, post-Covid the cost of living for most working Pakistanis has become prohibitive.
At the height of the pandemic, the government made hay about protecting ‘daily wage workers’.
As the PM’s well-choreographed visits to some Islamabad bazars clarified, by ‘daily wage workers’ the government actually meant self-employed vendors.
In today’s Pakistan, investors and government officials would rather build gated housing schemes and profit from real estate speculation than set up a factory and hire waged workers for production.
The plunging rupee makes a bad situation worse
But this is a government that bends over backwards begging for money for its own economy, and now for the purportedly ‘friendly government’ in Kabul.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1646806/pro-rich-growthThey sell us hateful ideologies to keep their pro-rich growth cycle intact.
The government’s proposed inverse gas tariff plan seeks to massively increase prices for 43pc of sale volumes to partially finance the cost of gas supplies to “protected” lower-end consumers.
This is part of the fresh cross-subsidy mechanism for gas prices under consideration of the Cabinet Committee on Energy (CCoE) to force shifting of space and water heating to electricity instead of natural gas in four peak winter months (November-February).
It is yet to be seen, however, if enough electricity efficient space and water heating appliances are available in the market to facilitate this transition at a cost affordable and acceptable to consumers.
As to what they finally agreed upon:Pakistan and China on Thursday agreed to keep unchanged the tariff and tax policies relating to power sector contracts and arrest and prosecute the attackers of July 14 Dasu bus tragedy at the earliest.
The Chinese has been agitating build-up of power sector dues going beyond $1.4bn (about Rs230bn), creation of a revolving fund for automatic payments and an increase in withholding tax rates after the agreements were signed.
Pakistan has been seeking changes in tariff structure for independent power producers to reduce financial burden in line with tariff discounts secured from other IPPs to address the circular debt pressure.
Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, who co-chaired it, said the two sides had agreed to the need and importance of enhanced security not only for CPEC projects but also Chinese labourers working in Pakistan, following the Dasu incident.
Manish_P wrote:Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, who co-chaired it, said the two sides had agreed to the need and importance of enhanced security not only for CPEC projects but also Chinese labourers working in Pakistan, following the Dasu incident.
The state-run Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) is believed to have bought some 575,000 tonnes of wheat in an international tender, European traders said on Thursday. The TCP was believed to have purchased all the wheat at $383.50 c&f after several trading houses agreed to match the lowest price offered in the tender on Monday, traders said.
Pakistan has bought wheat regularly in the global market in recent months in an effort to boost domestic supply and cool prices.
So, here's the reality. These are not "one & done" deals. Wheat and sugar get voraciously consumed and these purchases will have to be repeated every month. There are over 250 million bhookey-nangey pakis to feed.Meanwhile, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Thursday approved to import 50,000 tonnes of sugar to maintain sufficient stock in the country.
The membership of Pakistan Railways (PR) of the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (OTIF) — under Convention concerning International Carriage by Rail (COTIF) — is likely to be suspended as the former has failed to pay its annual membership fee for two years.
The PR should have paid the fee (about $90,000 per year), as this is not a huge amount for a huge department of nearly 80,000 employees and deals with billions of rupees annually
They can't afford a $90K membership? 80,000 employees for two-three dozen passenger trains? That is some racket. And, they are worried about their image!If the PR’s membership is suspended due to non-payment of membership fee, it will not be easy to restore the same quickly. It is a matter of the country’s image
Anup ji, past 2 pages have shown that every other Paki or his cousin brother is a Nobel level economist.anupmisra wrote:More pressure on pakhani treasury....
Good luck funding the TSPA..
And, after all the cattle have been slaughtered, they can go after each other. Hey, it's their national pastime.Aditya_V wrote:Instead of importing wheat why cant Pakistan just slaughter more cattle and make it the only item on the menu
Cattle in Paklands mean donkeys now a days. Old ones are eaten, young ones are exported to China along with brides. Two legged donkeys are eating their four legged brethren.Aditya_V wrote:Instead of importing wheat why cant Pakistan just slaughter more cattle and make it the only item on the menu
plunged to an all-time low at Rs169.60 against the greenback in the interbank market on Monday
Meanwhile, in the open market the dollar was selling at Rs171.60.
Choron ka link: https://www.dawn.com/news/1648871/dolla ... its-rs1696Along with speculation, the demand was still high which is why the dollar appreciating on a day-to-day basis.
Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi has once again urged the international community to engage with the new reality in Afghanistan and unfreeze the assets so that things did not fall apart.
The foreign minister, expressing his view over freezing of about $10 billion in Afghan assets, said “Afghan needs an economic injection and that money could become handy if available.
He suggested that there could be ways and means to ensure that the money be reached to the needy
The collapse could lead to exodus, a huge influx of refugees moving in different directions towards, Pakistan
And we are very concerned about that
Haramiyon ka link: https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/895932 ... se-qureshiAbout an inclusive government in Afghanistan, the foreign minister said that gradually, it appeared Taliban had accepted the idea mentally over inclusion of ethnicities.
Mort Walker wrote:USD to PKR is now $1 to Rs. 170. This is an all time high. Or more correctly an all time low.
nail on the head onlee.Dilbu wrote:TSP has more to lose if Taliban is not recognized as the legit govt in Afghanistan. It will result in further chaos within Taliban ranks, loss of control for ISI and severe blow back within the borders of TSP.