ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has managed to stop dollarisation and so depreciation of the rupee by introducing a set of new measures, primarily aimed at monitoring of the buyers.
The Information Technology (IT) has been instrumental in stopping flight of dollar out of Pakistan and help the investigation agencies, in particular, the Federal Investigation Agency ( FIA) to trace the buyers of dollar and probe them if they are habitual buyers.
Since takeover of Taliban in Afghanistan, Pakistan is struggling to stop flight of dollar from Pakistan to that war-torn country. It put in place some measures to check flight of dollar from Pakistan to Afghanistan, but the shrewd buyers (local plus Afghans) kept on dodging the monitoring system. Talking to NEWSMAN on the condition of anonymity, an investigator said
“We noted massive taking away of dollar at Torkhum and Chaman border points as anybody who travels out of Pakistan could legally take with him 10000 dollar”. The facility of carrying 10000 dollar while travelling out of Pakistan was massively misused by Afghan nationals and for the same the limit of carrying dollar for Afghanistan has been reduced to only 500 dollar, the investigator noted.
As a result of massive buying from the open currency market, dollar kept on soaring to down the rupee to historic low in recent months. The continuous depreciation of the rupee was a big worry for the government authorities. Finally, the government changed the mode of checking of dollar buying and relied on IT to have an effective monitoring of currency market in place. It followed a 2-pronged strategy to check massive buying of dollar since June last. It introduced even stricter measures like making mandatory for the currency exchange companies to have biometric of the buyers of dollar to make sure that they have the real data of the buyers . Second, it made mandatory for the buyers the use of banking channel for payment to buy dollar if their buying limit crosses 10,000 limit.
Meanwhile, FIA Banking Circle is continuously keeping an eye on currency exchange market. Its officials have gathered data from the currency exchange companies and are regularly summoning the regular buyers of dollar from the open market for questioning. The FIA investigations have shied away investors -cum- buyers and it had brought down dollar rate against the rupee. The dollar rate has gone down from all time high of 175 plus to down to 170 in last around one week.
Bostan Khan, chairman All Pakistan Currency Exchange Companies welcomed the new monitoring measures that helped the government stop flight of dollar from Pakistan.
Bostan Khan said “We do appreciate the new monitoring measures like making biometric of the buyers mandatory as it will increase trust of the authorities on currency exchange companies”.
According to Mr Khan, the condition of CNIC was not working as a reliable tool to identify the buyers when required by any investigation agencies. He said it also created doubts on the credibility of the currency exchange companies and now the use of biometric will put an end to this dubious buying and help the currency exchange companies keep correct and real data of the buyers of foreign currencies.