Govt tightening noose around ‘dollar hoarders, speculators’: Fawad

Information minister says operation being launched against those involved in speculative currency trade

In a bid to revive the country’s crumbling economy, the government has directed Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to launch a crackdown on those involved in dollar hoarding and speculative currency trade, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry announced on Friday.

Taking to Twitter, the minister said the operation was being launched in coordination with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the Ministry of Finance.

Government has directed FIA to launch a full fledged operation against Dollar hoarding, and speculative currency trade the operation is being launched in coordination with State Bank and ministry of Finance

— Ch Fawad Hussain (@fawadchaudhry) April 5, 2019

Earlier in the day, Minister for Finance Asad Umar said that speculations in the local money market had sparked the dollar value against rupee which was further ignited by the fake news being spread in the social media.

Speaking to reporters in Islamabad, the minister said there would be no further devaluation in rupee value as the SBP had categorically made it clear that the supply and demand of dollar against rupee had reached to its equilibrium level.

The minister said that there was no condition by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the exchange rate or to devalue the rupee.



A currency should be aligned with the fundamentals, he said adding, the real effective exchange rate in January, 2018 was Rs127 against US dollar, which was 27 per cent overvalued at that time. He stressed the need for stopping these speculations for stabilisation of local currency.

The minister said the statements of former finance minister who was a declared absconder and was responsible for destroying the national economy and putting it on the verge of collapse has also created speculations about dollar value. He warned that all such speculators to stop spreading such rumors otherwise the government had the option of taking them to the court and deal with them according to the law.

Umar said the government of Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf inherited a fragile economy with deepening fiscal deficit, increasing current account deficit, and declining foreign direct investment, adding that it also inherited $19 billion current account deficit.

With additional input from APP