DOLLAR DILEMMA IS PROVING INJURIOUS TO ECONOMY

The Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME) has expressed serious concern on the depreciation of rupee defeating all accepted norms and concepts of demand and supply theories making the landed cost of imported raw material and parts very high and making the feasibility of several units non viable.
President UNISAME Zulfikar Thaver said “According to our experts who are members of our council the main reason is the liberty given to exchange companies who are doing underhand business of hundis and hawalas and also encouraging big investors to buy with their undeclared/ undisclosed money and sell the dollars when favourable to them by pushing the exchange rate for gains.
Secondly Pakistan is burdened by heavy buying of Afghan traders who buy dollars from Pakistan open market from the money exchangers and carry out their under invoicing from Pakistan.
Thirdly the Afghani traders are very active in our markets and instead of buying their foreign exchange requirements from Dubai or other free ports they indulge in buying from our money exchangers ”
In many of their imports they declare goods in transit but ultimately through maneuvering and manipulations the goods land up here in Pakistan and flood our markets the Unisame Council lamented.
Pakistan considers Afghanistan as brotherly neighbours and facilitates and accommodates Afghanistan at the cost of its own disadvantage they said.
The government needs to discourage smuggling of goods from Afghanistan, Iran and accordingly set up check post on the routes which would serve as road blocks for illegal transactions through the borders.
Secondly to strictly monitor the activities of the money exchangers and in fact examine the possibility of handing over the money exchange business exclusively to the commercial banks to stop the money exchangers their agents and brokers from speculations and creating artificial demand and shortage by working for the black marketeers, money launderers and back door buyers of dollars.
The government needs to realise that if action is not taken against these players the dollar will remain under the control of these miscreants and as one money exchanger proudly said that they control the rate and the government also. It is indeed a matter of grave concern that it has become a mafia and the State Bank of Pakistan and Ministry of Finance must co-ordinate to puncture this mafia before it gets out of hand and damages the economy.
The actual parity of dollar to rupee must be determined on the basis of the recognized formula which is aligned to the international rate of dollar itself and against gold and other factors known to the economist in the Central Bank and the Finance ministry and under no circumstances this artificial rate must be allowed to prevail by creating heavy demand.
The business community both the big and small are looking forward to the finance wizards sitting in the ministry and Central bank to rectify this artificial rate of dollar created by the mafia and to deal with them with an iron hand.
It is very important and infact crucial that the policy makers disable this mafia from damaging our economy by their manipulations and trickery. Pakistan also needs to get a clean slate from FATF and unless there is strict monitoring from agencies we may not get out of the grey list.

Posted in: Press Releases