KARACHI: Afghanistan’s emerging situation and burgeoning import bills are keeping Pakistan’s currency under pressure which has depreciated by more than 10 percent in the last four months, said traders and analysts on Friday.
The Pak rupee did make some progress in the last two days and closed at Rs166.91 on Friday. Official data reveal the currency was hovering around the same level last year on July 29 when the country was witnessing the peak of the coronavirus pandemic.
“The situation in Afghanistan is keeping the national currency under tremendous pressure,” said Khurram Schehzad of Alpha Beta Core, a financial advisory platform. “Greenback is in a massive demand in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of the international forces.”
Local currency dealers agree with the assessment, saying about $2 million have been flowing out of the country to Afghanistan on a daily basis since the fall of Kabul.
“Afghans with dual nationality have been buying 1.5 to 2 million dollars on a daily basis from open market and taking it to their country since the American currency is now in a short supply over there,” Malik Bostan, Chairman Forex Association of Pakistan, told Arab News. “The inflow of dollars has stopped in the neighboring country, and Afghanistan's entire banking system has collapsed.”
“Previously, Pakistan received $5 million to $7 million from Afghanistan every day since currency was cheap over there and salary payments were mostly made in dollars,” he added.
Apart from the situation in Afghanistan, the Pakistani rupee is also weakening against greenback due to the country’s growing trade deficit.
Pakistan has recorded the highest trade deficit in August when its import bill stood at $6.3 billion and its export revenue was $2.25 billion, causing a trade deficit of $4.06 billion. Previously, the country had recorded its highest deficit of $3.77 billion in June 2018.
“The situation indicates that dollar is in a short supply to meet the demand of importers which is exerts a significant pressure on the national currency,” Samiullah Tariq, director research at the Pakistan-Kuwait Investment, told Arab News.
“In July, the current account deficit was $773 million, but it seems that it is going to be higher for August, though the remittance figures have yet not been released,” he added.
The State Bank of Pakistan reported on Thursday the country had $27.22 billion in foreign reserves. The country’s forex position was also strengthened since it received $2.75 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week. However, this build-up has also failed to cool the currency market where the Pakistani rupee remains under pressure.
“The policy of the government or the central bank seems to be that it is not going to use its forex reserves to defend the rupee,” Tariq commented.
US withdrawal from Afghanistan, high import bill weaken Pakistan’s currency — traders
https://arab.news/c6y5n
US withdrawal from Afghanistan, high import bill weaken Pakistan’s currency — traders
- Local currency dealers say nearly $2 million have been flowing to Afghanistan from Pakistan on a daily basis since the international military pullout
- The Pakistani currency has lost nearly 10 percent of its value against the US dollar in the last four months
Pakistani man convicted in US in political assassination plot tied to Iranian paramilitary
- Asif Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses
- He testified he met a Revolutionary Guard operative who gave him countersurveillance training, assignments
NEW YORK: A Pakistani business owner who tried to hire hit men to kill a US politician was convicted Friday in a trial that showcased allegations of Iran-backed plotting on American soil.
As the Iran war unfolded in the Mideast, Asif Merchant acknowledged in a US court that he sought to put an assassination in motion during the 2024 presidential campaign — a plot that was quickly disrupted by American investigators before it had a chance to proceed.
A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant on terrorism and murder for hire charges.
The verdict after only a couple hours of deliberations followed a weeklong trial that included remarkable testimony from Merchant himself.
Merchant told the jury he was carrying out instructions from a contact in the Islamic Republic’s powerful paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. According to Merchant, the handler never specified a target but broached names including then-candidate Donald Trump, then-President Joe Biden and Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who was also in the race for a time.
The Iranian government has denied trying to kill US officials.
The nascent plot fell apart after Merchant showed an acquaintance what he had in mind by using objects on a napkin to depict a shooting at a rally. He asked the man to help him hire assassins. Instead, he was introduced to undercover FBI agents who were secretly recording him, as had the acquaintance.
Merchant told the supposed hit men he needed services that could include killing “some political person” and paid them $5,000 in cash in a parked car in Manhattan.
“This man landed on American soil hoping to kill President Trump — instead, he was met with the might of American law enforcement,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement released after the conviction.
Merchant’s attorney, Avraham Moskowitz, didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.
Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He has two families, in Pakistan and Iran, and he sometimes visited the US for his garment business.
Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.
He maintained that he had to do his handler’s bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he’d be arrested and explain his situation to authorities before anyone was killed.
“I was going along with it,” he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.
Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the US considers a foreign terrorist organization, and he didn’t proactively go to authorities.
Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan when he was arrested on July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelated attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but that they had been tracking a threat on Trump’s life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic called “unsubstantiated and malicious.”
When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn’t say he had acted out of fear for his family.
Prosecutors argued that he didn’t back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn’t think the agents would believe him because they seemed to “think that I am some type of super-spy,” which he said he was “absolutely not.”
