The country’s dollar reserves continue to move northward and contracted by 1.3 per cent or $221 million during the week that ended February 24. Last week too saw the country’s foreign exchange reserves dipping by $123 million up to February 17. According to State Bank, during the week under review, the country’s holdings of the greenback shrank to $16.424 billion as against $16.645 billion of the previous week. During the week, the central bank’s reserves declined by $150 million or 1.2 per cent to $12.062 billion from the previous week’s $12.212 billion. The commercial banks are also witnessing their dollar holdings depleting for last two consecutive weeks with the current week seeing a contraction of 1.6 per cent or $71 million as opposed to the previous week when the banks’ reserves had declined by $49 million. The banks, during the review week, slid to $4.362 billion against $4.433 billion of last week. After hitting the record $18.31 billion mark in July last year, the country’s dollar reserves are constantly going down because of what the central bank says repayment of foreign loans. The State Bank of Pakistan repaid at least $399 million to the International Monetary Fund at the end of last month (February), with the economic managers reportedly having said that the repayment of $1.1 billion IMF repayments by June 2012 were already budgeted, thus would have no impact on the fragile economy.
