The Pakistan Industrial & Traders Associations Front (PIAF) Chairman Faheem ur Rehman Saigol has said that the country’s economy has nosedived partly due to external factors of the Russia-Ukraine war, global recession and the devastating floods but equally relevantly due to some questionable domestic policy decisions, besides widening differential between interbank and open market rupee-dollar parity, which has led to a decline in remittance inflows by enabling the hundi-hawala system to get a meaningful boost after the global lockdown in the aftermath of Covid-19. PIAF Chairman, in a joint statement along with senior vice chairman Nasrullah Mughal and vice chairman Tahir Manzoor Ch, stressed need for a revisit of some policies including the coordination exercise between the Ministry of Finance and SBP.

He said that no independent economist could support the economic policies that are currently in place. Take the widening differential between the interbank and open market rupee-dollar parity that has compromised the capacity of the importers of essential items and the repatriation of profits by foreign companies, including the ticket fare sales of foreign airline companies, thereby shriveling the availability of dollars in the economy. And granted that the Afghan crisis is responsible for dollar outflows from our markets, yet this is not the only reason. In addition this differential in the rate is contracting remittance inflows as overseas Pakistanis are reverting to the hundi/hawala system again, a practice abandoned during the pandemic due to a global lockdown.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP