KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan’s (SBP) foreign exchange reserves fell by $720 million to $11.31 billion in a week, central bank data showed on Thursday.
The SBP said the central bank’s reserves were recorded at $11.31 billion during the week that ended on April 1, down $720 million compared to $12.047 billion on March 25.
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Overall reserves held by the country, including net reserves of commercial banks, stood at $17.47 billion as of April 1, the SBP said, adding net foreign reserves of banks dropped by $340.95 million to $6.15 billion.
In an emergency meeting earlier today, the SBP’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to raise policy rate by 250bps to 12.25%. “This strong and proactive policy response was necessitated by a deterioration in outlook for inflation and increase in risks to external stability since last meeting,” the central bank said in a statement.
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The MPC noted that the SBP is also taking further complementary actions to reduce pressures on inflation and the current account, namely an increase in the interest rate on the export refinance scheme (EFS) and widening the set of import items subject to cash margin requirements.
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