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  • Rupee witnesses biggest fall in over 24 years as Pakistan moves to meet IMF condition for bailout deal


Rupee witnesses biggest fall in over 24 years as Pakistan moves to meet IMF condition for bailout deal

A currency trader counts Pakistani Rupee notes as he prepares an exchange of US dollars in Islamabad, Pakistan on December 11, 2017. (REUTERS)
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Updated 26 January 2023
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Rupee witnesses biggest fall in over 24 years as Pakistan moves to meet IMF condition for bailout deal

  • Pak rupee fell by around 9.61 percent or Rs24.53 in the interbank market on Thursday
  • A market-based exchange rate is one of the conditions the IMF has set before it agrees to unlock a stalled bail-out program for Pakistan
Updated 26 January 2023
KHURSHID AHMED   

KARACHI: Pakistan’s national currency on Thursday witnessed its biggest fall in a single day in over 24 years, as it depreciated by over 9 percent against the US dollar, as Pakistan moves to meet the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) conditionalities to resume a stalled $7 billion bailout program, dealers and analysts said. 

The rupee closed what transpired to be one of the most volatile trading sessions of the year at Rs255.43 against the greenback. The national currency witnessed massive depreciation of around 9.61 percent, or over Rs24.53 in the interbank market, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan.  

Pakistan's rupee previously saw such a massive single-day depreciation back on October 26, 1998, when it depreciated by 9.9 percent against the US dollar, according to Arif Habib Limited research. 

“The much-awaited PKR adjustment has been done today by allowing banks to quote rates based on market demand-supply,” Muhammad Sohail, CEO of Topline Securities, told Arab News. 

Sohail said this was also the case till September 2022 when the bank rate was kept in a narrow band that gave rise to the black market. He expects the move will now pave the way for the revival of the stalled IMF program.  

“Now the black market rate will come closer to the bank rate," he said. "This will help in increasing exports and inward remittances through the banking channel. This may also help in reviving the delayed ninth review with the IMF and inflows from friendly nations," he added.    

During the intra-day trading, Pakistan's rupee plunged as low as Rs259.75 for selling and Rs254.75 against the greenback as  Pakistani authorities apparently allowed the currency to adjust itself according to the market demand and supply requirements.   

The currency also recorded a massive free fall in the open market where it depreciated by Rs19.4 to Rs260 for buying and Rs19 to Rs262 for selling against the greenback, according to the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (ECAP). 

The ECAP said late on Tuesday it was lifting the cap on the currency in the interest of the country.

Moving away from the managed exchange rate to free float was meant to discourage the prevailing three different rates to assess the dollar's value: the state bank’s official rate, the one assessed by the foreign exchange companies and the black market rate. 

“Today was a historic day for the open and interbank market as the currency devaluation has made a fresh record,” ECAP Secretary General Zafar Sultan Paracha told Arab News. 

However, he said the move could not discourage the black marketing of the dollar. Paracha said exchange companies were already selling the dollar to banks through credit cards at Rs255, indicating that the currency was likely to depreciate to this level. 

The move toward a market-based exchange rate takes Pakistan one step closer to the revival of a stalled bailout program as it is one of the conditions that the IMF has set before it agrees to unlock more funds. Previously, against IMF advice, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has tried to defend the rupee, including currency market intervention. 

Pakistan’s national currency has been under immense pressure due to a higher demand for import payments amid a forex crisis, with reserved held by the central bank now falling to $4.6 billion, barely enough to cover three weeks of imports.  

The low reserves have compelled the government to restrict the import of goods, including industrial raw materials, to stop dollar outflows, while commercial banks have stopped issuing letters of credit (LCs), leaving importers struggling to arrange the greenback for already placed orders.  

Analysts said the IMF wanted Pakistan to use a market-determined exchange rate rather than keep it artificially managed.  

“IMF wanted Pakistan to have market-determined rates, electricity and gas tariff hikes, and a minibudget as preconditions to revive the stalled program,” Tahir Abbas, Head of research at Arif Habib Limited, told Arab News. 

“Today’s move seems that the country is meeting IMF conditions. It is now expected that the fund program will be resumed next month.”  

Analysts said the move to further liberalize the currency market would fuel inflation in the country which currently hovers around 24 percent. 

“The currency depreciation is likely to fuel inflation in the country and we expect that rate measured by the consumer price Index would hit 30% in the coming months,” Samiullah Tariq, Director Research at Pakistan Kuwait Investment Company, told Arab News.  

Pakistani analysts expect the currency depreciation would continue and rupee would likely hit Rs270 against the greenback by end of the current fiscal year. 

“We maintain our exchange rate forecast and expect PKR-US$ exchange rate to trade close to Rs270 by June 2023 in the interbank market,” Topline Securities said in its report on Thursday. 

Topics: Pakistan

From Narnaul to Hyderabad: Pakistani recounts perilous journey from India in 1947

Updated 14 August 2025
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From Narnaul to Hyderabad: Pakistani recounts perilous journey from India in 1947

  • 88-year-old Muhammad Saleem Pirzada remembers bloodshed of 1947 and peaceful coexistence that came before it
  • Pirzada says at least 80 members of his extended family were killed in violence that followed Partition of India
Updated 14 August 2025
NAIMAT KHAN

HYDERABAD, Pakistan: On a rain-soaked September night in 1947, ten-year-old Muhammad Saleem Pirzada was woken by his father and told to gather whatever valuables the family could carry. 

Outside, the streets of Narnaul — then part of the princely state of Patiala in present-day India — were dark, slick, and dangerous.

The order was clear: leave, or risk certain death at the hands of armed Hindu and Sikh mobs that had already begun attacking Muslim neighborhoods.

“Walk barefoot and put a cloth in the children’s mouths so they may not talk,” Pirzada recalls his father telling his mother as the family prepared to slip away in silence. 

That night, Sept. 8, Pirzada, his father, grandfather, four siblings and three other relatives walked more than two kilometers to the railway station. His mother would join them in Pakistan months later.

“It’s natural, when a person is ill, near death, and then Allah grants them health, that moment of near-death comes back to mind. It was just like that, only Allah saved us.”

Britain’s hurried partition of the Subcontinent into India and Pakistan had triggered one of the largest migrations in human history. Around 15 million people were displaced along religious lines, and more than a million were killed in massacres and reprisals, according to independent estimates.

In Narnaul, the violence began on Sept. 6, when mobs attacked Muslim homes. The next day brought more killings and looting. By the third day, the Pirzada family decided to leave, joining a crowd of terrified Muslims at the railway station. Sikh state police initially tried to stop them, but relented after the intervention of the British Railways’ Watch and Ward force.

“We boarded from there and set off,” Pirzada says. 

Along the journey, the train stopped at stations where bodies lay scattered. 

“We saw bodies, wounded people, some without limbs,” he remembers. 

The family eventually reached Hyderabad, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, traveling via Munabao in the Indian state of Rajasthan. 

“May Allah never let anyone see such a time.”

Pirzada estimates that at least 80 members of his extended family were killed in those weeks.

It was not always this way.

Before 1947, he says, Narnaul was a place of deep communal trust. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims attended each other’s weddings, and summer nights saw neighbors gathered together on charpoys.

“The Hindus would come and sit there [in the Muslim neighborhoods] at night in the summer… That’s how relations were with the Hindus. They would attend our weddings,” he recalls. 

Sometimes Hindu fathers would even entrust Muslim traders to escort their daughters to their in-laws’ homes. 

“The Hindus would say, ‘Mian ji, you are going there, take my daughter along.’ I have seen those days of affection.”

He still remembers the names of his Hindu schoolteachers, even as he acknowledges that the violence in Eastern Punjab was part of a larger cycle of retaliations. 

“In Eastern Punjab, the atrocities were greater… the Muslims there were martyred,” he says, accusing the Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh, of providing arms to Hindu and Sikh mobs. 
“The riots took place at the instigation of the Maharaja of Patiala.”

When asked whether his family would have migrated if peace had held, Pirzada is clear: “There would be no question of coming [to Pakistan]. We had land, the crops were good, and life went on. Had we stayed there, we would have used new technology and increased production.”

In Pakistan, Pirzada briefly worked as a clerk before his family received a land allotment in rural Hyderabad. Farming became his life’s work, and today, at 88, he lives surrounded by his two sons, one daughter, and ten grandchildren.

But more than seven decades later, Narnaul remains etched in his memory. 

“One’s homeland, the place of one’s birth, is always remembered. The desire is still there. May Allah grant the opportunity so I can visit it once,” the said. 

“We even saw some people who died in Pakistan insisting, ‘No, no, we will go back! We will go back’!”

Topics: 79th Independence Day

Mother arrested after allegedly killing her two children in case that stuns Pakistan

Updated 14 August 2025
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Mother arrested after allegedly killing her two children in case that stuns Pakistan

  • Police say woman slaughtered eight-year-old son and four-year-old daughter with a knife at Karachi home
  • Mother in custody after sending footage of the killings to former husband who alerted authorities
Updated 14 August 2025
NAIMAT KHAN

KARACHI: A Pakistani mother has been arrested in Karachi after allegedly killing her two young children amid a dispute with her ex-husband, in a case that has shocked the country, police said on Thursday.

Child killings by mothers are rare in Pakistan. Experts say such incidents are often linked to mental health crises, family breakdowns, or domestic stress, underscoring the limited psychiatric and social support available for women facing marital disputes in the conservative South Asian nation.

According to a police report, the victims were identified as Zarar, 8, and Samia, 4, who died at their home in Karachi’s Defense Phase 6 area early on Thursday morning. Police said the mother was taken into custody at the scene and was being interrogated.

The woman’s former husband, Ghufran Khalid, told police she was “mentally ill,” according to the statement.

“A lady namely Adeeba Ghufran w/o Ghufran has killed her two kids ... cut the necks with sharp knife of her kids due to divorce issue with her husband,” Deputy Inspector General (DIG) South Karachi Syed Asad Raza said in a text message to Arab News. 

He said the woman sent photographs of the children after the killing to her former husband, who then called the police helpline.

SSP South Mahzor Ali told Arab News the couple divorced last September, followed by a custody battle in which the court granted custody to the father. The children lived with him but visited their mother several days a week.

“Last night [Aug. 13], the children came from their father’s home to stay with their mother,” Ali said, adding that she allegedly killed them the next morning and then sent a video of the incident to her ex-husband, who immediately alerted police. 

A rescue team found the children dead with their throats slit, and the mother was taken into custody. He said the father would file a police complaint after burying the children.

Research on cases where mothers kill their children, often described in criminology and psychology as filicide, points to multiple underlying causes. 

Studies suggest that such acts are most commonly linked to severe mental illness, including postpartum depression, psychosis, or untreated psychiatric conditions; extreme domestic stress such as custody battles or marital breakdowns; or situations of social and economic isolation. In some instances, mothers report distorted beliefs that killing their children is an act of protection from perceived future suffering. 

Experts caution that while these cases are rare, they often reveal gaps in mental health care and social support systems, particularly in societies where family breakdown carries stigma and couples have limited access to counselling or psychiatric treatment.
 

Topics: Mother murder

‘This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service’: Transmitter that announced nation’s birth lives on in Islamabad museum

Updated 14 August 2025
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‘This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service’: Transmitter that announced nation’s birth lives on in Islamabad museum

  • Marconi transmitter aired Pakistan’s birth on night of Aug. 13, 1947 through voices of Zahur Azar, Mustafa Ali Hamdani 
  • Museum’s archive displays original scripts, microphones and recordings from Pakistan’s broadcast history
Updated 14 August 2025
Muhammad Ibrahim

ISLAMABAD: Encased in glass at the center of a softly lit hall in Islamabad’s Radio Pakistan museum stands a towering relic of the country’s birth — a Marconi transmitter that once carried the solemn words:

“This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service, Lahore. We now bring to you a special program on ‘The Dawn of Independence.’”

It was the night of August 13, 1947. As the world tuned in, the voices of broadcasters Zahur Azar and Mustafa Ali Hamdani broke the silence, one in English, the other in Urdu, to announce the creation of a new nation on Radio Pakistan, the national broadcaster which came into being simultaneously with Pakistan.  

The photo taken on August 1, 2025, shows the Mics used by Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. (AN Photo)

Installed in Lahore in 1937 as part of British India’s early radio infrastructure, the transmitter was repurposed a decade later to deliver the defining broadcast of Pakistan’s emergence as an independent state.

Today, nearly eight decades on, it has found a second life in the capital, restored, preserved, and displayed as a monument to the country’s broadcast and political history at the Radio Pakistan museum. 

“This transmitter was stored away in our engineering store for years,” Saeed Ahmed Shaikh, director-general of Radio Pakistan, told Arab News.

“It was vacuum tube technology, obsolete. But because vibrant nations preserve and document their history, we brought it here, restored it, and put it on display.”

BROADCAST THAT ECHOED THROUGH TIME

Back in 1947, radio was the most immediate and far-reaching medium available. Newsprint was slow, television still rare. The airwaves were how people learned of revolution, war — and freedom. And this Marconi machine was how Pakistan was introduced to itself and the world.

The photo taken on August 1, 2025, shows an old photograph displayed at the Radio Pakistan Museum of a rehearsal session by Pakistani legendry singer Bilquis Khanum. (AN Photo)

“It wasn’t just a broadcast,” Shaikh said. “It was the dawn of a new era.”

Restored in 2020, the transmitter is now the centerpiece of a museum that charts nearly a century of Pakistani broadcasting. The collection includes microphones, vinyl records, antique radios, classical music recordings, and the original Urdu and English scripts of landmark news bulletins.

Among the artifacts is the very microphone Hamdani used during his independence night announcement.

“We’re not just witnesses to history,” Shaikh added. “We’re its custodians. And we want our young generation to connect with that legacy.”

CRADLE OF MUSIC AND MEMORY

Founded in 1947, Radio Pakistan, also known as Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, was not only the country’s first public broadcaster but also a formative platform for the country’s musical and cultural identity.

“If you ask the late Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, he would tell you his first public performance was aired by Radio Pakistan. Same with Attaullah Khan Esakhelvi. These were voices we introduced to the world,” Shaikh said, naming giants of Pakistani music. 

The photo taken on August 1, 2025, shows equipment desplayed at the Radio Pakistan Museum. (AN Photo)

Over the decades, Radio Pakistan aired everything from Sufi qawwalis to political speeches, public service announcements, and dramatic radio plays that reached millions. For many households, it was the soundtrack of a nation coming into its own.

DIGITAL ERA

Since assuming office as director-general in 2023, Shaikh has introduced reforms to bring the legacy broadcaster into the digital era. A major focus has been archiving and digitizing its vast music and speech recordings, some of which date back more than 70 years.

In partnership with a Chinese technology firm, Radio Pakistan is digitizing its full music archive, a collection scheduled to be accessible globally via platforms like Apple Music by September 2025.

“We’re moving fast,” Shaikh said. “Soon you’ll be able to access our music from anywhere, right on your phone.”

Already, the broadcaster boasts over a million followers on X, 2.7 million on Facebook, and a mobile app that streams live content from 53 stations across the country. Its digital reach spans far beyond Pakistan -to Gulf countries, Europe, and North America — connecting expatriates not just to news, but to familiar sounds and languages from home.

“[For us] the question is no longer, ‘How many people in Pakistan are listening?’” Shaikh said, when asked about a decline in radio audiences worldwide.

“The question now is: How many people worldwide are listening to Radio Pakistan?”

Topics: Pakistan Independence Day 2025

Dubai hosts world’s largest Pakistan Independence Day gathering, embassy says

Updated 14 August 2025
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Dubai hosts world’s largest Pakistan Independence Day gathering, embassy says

  • Around 60,000 people attended August 10 celebrations at Expo City in Dubai
  • Envoy highlights $7.9 billion UAE remittances, unveils new digital consular services
Updated 14 August 2025
SAIMA SHABBIR

ISLAMABAD: About 60,000 people attended Pakistan’s Independence Day celebration at the Dubai Expo City, making it the largest such gathering in the world, the embassy of Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates said on Thursday.

Expressing gratitude to the UAE government, envoy Faisal Niaz Tirmizi acknowledged their support in making this year’s Pakistan Independence Day celebrations “unprecedented in scale.”

“The event, held on 10 August in Dubai Expo City attended by around 60,000 people, was the largest Pakistan Independence Day gathering held anywhere in the world,” the embassy said in a statement.

Tirmizi also underscored the contributions of the Pakistani community in the UAE, underscoring their importance to Pakistan’s economy at a time of fiscal reform and external account pressures.

“The Pakistani diaspora has played a vital role in the development of the UAE and has been a backbone of our economy through their remittances,” Tirmizi said, urging expatriates to continue their constructive role in the country’s progress.

As part of the celebrations, the embassy announced the launch of an online tracking system for passports and National Identity Cards for Overseas Pakistanis (NICOP), aimed at improving consular services.

Tirmizi also pointed to improvements in education, saying two community schools had achieved a “Good” ranking for the first time in 20 years, and that more Pakistani private schools had been approached to expand branches in the Emirates.

Topics: Pakistan Independence Day 2025 Dubai Expo Cit

Two LUMS professors become first Pakistanis to join MIT’s J-PAL network

Updated 14 August 2025
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Two LUMS professors become first Pakistanis to join MIT’s J-PAL network

  • Dr. Farah Said and Dr. Ali Cheema are first Pakistani academics invited as J-PAL Affiliated Professors
  • J-PAL, co-founded by Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, is a leading global poverty research network
Updated 14 August 2025
NAIMAT KHAN

KARACHI: Two faculty members from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) have become the first Pakistani academics invited to join the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, LUMS said in a statement.

Dr. Ali Cheema, the vice chancellor, is a professor of economics and politics at LUMS and co-founder of the university’s Mahbub ul Haq Research Center, with research spanning political economy, development and governance. Dr. Farah Said is an associate professor of economics whose work focuses on gender, labor markets, and poverty, and she has led several randomized control trials on empowerment and development interventions.

“LUMS is delighted to announce that faculty members Dr. Farah Said and Dr. Ali Cheema have been invited to join the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at MIT as Affiliated Professors — the first two faculty members from any Pakistani university to receive this honor,” the statement said.

J-PAL, co-founded by Nobel laureates Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, is one of the world’s foremost institutions promoting evidence-based policymaking to reduce poverty. Its Affiliated Professors include leading economists from top global universities, among them five Nobel laureates.

The selection of Dr. Said and Dr. Cheema recognizes their “impactful work in economics and political economy, which has been published in top journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, American Political Science Review, Science, Economic Journal, and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics,” LUMS said.

“This milestone marks a significant achievement for LUMS, Pakistan’s economic community, and the nation, as we contribute to shaping global economic research.”

When asked to comment, Drs. Said and Cheema said their research owed much to their co-authors, colleagues, and students.

“This is an exciting time to be part of the Pakistani economist community, with a growing number of Pakistani-origin academics shaping global research on issues that are critical for the country,” the professors said. 

“We are also seeing the emergence of exceptional young Pakistani scholars who are asking deep questions about why economies, polities, and societies are not delivering for their people.”
 

Topics: LUMS Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)

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