Pakistan’s rupee registered gains against the US dollar in the inter-bank market, and appreciated 0.18% in the opening hours of trading on Monday.
At around 11:05am, the rupee was being quoted at 220.44, an appreciation of Re0.40 against the greenback, during intra-day trading.
On Friday, Pakistan’s rupee finally ended its seven-session depreciation run against the US dollar, and closed at 220.84 after appreciating Reo.11.
As per market experts, the improvement in the rupee comes after the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on Friday removed Pakistan, by consensus, from its list of countries under “increased monitoring”, also known as grey list after four years.
The decision was taken in a two-day FATF plenary and International Co-operation Review Group (ICRG) meetings held from October 20-21, 2021 in Paris and the same was announced in a press conference by the FATF’s president, T Raja Kumar.
“Pakistan has made significant improvements to strengthen the effectiveness of this framework for combating terrorism financing,” the FATF president acknowledged.
Experts believe that the development would boost the country’s perception and allow Pakistan to attract foreign investment in the long run.
Internationally, the U.S. dollar weathered another suspected blast of Japanese intervention to push higher on the yen on Monday. At the same time, for equities a drop in Chinese markets took the shine off hopes for an eventual slowdown in U.S. interest rate hikes.
The dollar index was up 0.063% at 111.87, with the euro down 0.02% to $0.9858.
Oil prices, a key indicator of currency parity, fell on Monday after China released much-delayed trade data which showed that demand in the world’s largest crude importer remained lacklustre in September as strict COVID-19 policy and fuel export curbs depress consumption.
