London: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar ruled out need for any particular supportive measures for rupee, stoking optimism among traders that ‘Darnomics’ will soon be able to crack country’s monetary conundrum. “Rupee has been heavily undervalued,” Dar said during an interview with Bloomberg in Washington, where he has been attending annual meetings of International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

“It is due to speculation and some players in market have been responsible for that,” he said. “I thank those players in market who have realised that that game at cost of national currency will not continue,” he asserted while highlighting that exchange rate stabilised after traders learned he would take office.  Responding to a query if he was planning to take any “specific steps” to boost rupee, he said, “I don’t think so.

We don’t have luxury of physically spending foreign exchange it’s very scarce at moment.” He was upbeat that economy would expand by more than around 2 percent pace projected by State Bank of Pakistan. “Maybe over 3 percent. I don’t want to be giving a big hope, but I’m fairly confident,” he said. Dar reiterated that “there’s no plan to engage with bondholders across board,” asking them to extend maturity date for Pakistan’s $ 1 billion global bond due in December.

Published in The Daily National Courier, October, 20 2022

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