Country’s forex reserves increase to $9.37 bn : Dar

SLAMABAD, Mar 11 (APP): Federal Minister for Finance, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar said that the forex reserves of the country have improved from US$ 7.59 billion on February 07, 2014 to US$ 9.37 billion on March 07 2014. “The efforts of the Government have started to show positive results and are on track to deliver what we had announced earlier that our Forex reserves will reach around US$ 10 billion by the end of March”, Ishaq Dar said in a press statement issued here on Tuesday.

He said the Government has implemented concrete steps to improve overall external position by ensuring substantial capital and financial inflows in the country; and as a result Forex Reserves of Pakistan have improved substantially in the last one month.

This has been made possible by not only receiving larger inflows from multilateral and bilateral resources; but also through attracting Forex flows through the capital markets and better home remittances, the Finance Minister added.

As you know, he said, in the first half of FY14 there was some drain on the foreign exchange reserves mainly on account of timing of large debt repayments; and some speculative tendencies were also seen putting pressure on the value of Rupee.

“However, we have all seen the recent positive results of our efforts and the resultant reversal of the speculative positions”, he added.

He said the Government was following a carefully planned strategy to attract Forex inflows from different sources, Coalition Support Fund (CSF)recoveries, Eitselat receivables, receipts of Euro bonds and inflows from multilateral and bilateral inflows as planned in the budget.

These inflows will help in improving the reserves position of the country and will help in channelizing the domestic Rupee liquidity to private sector, the minister added.