Pak rupee continues losing streak against USD

ISLAMABAD, Aug 23 (Xinhua): The Pakistani rupee continued its losing streaking against the US dollar, touching a record low as the greenback was traded at 299.01 rupees in the interbank market on Tuesday, according to the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP).
The US dollar closed at 297.13 rupees on Monday. On the second session of the week, the local currency depreciated by 1.88 rupees, or 0.63 per cent, against the US dollar, official figures showed.
This is the lowest level for the rupee against the dollar. In May it settled at the previous record low of 298.93.
The internal as well as external forces are causing this sharp decline of the rupee, Sajid Amin Javed, an economist at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, a local think-tank, told Xinhua.
"The International Monetary Fund's demand of reducing the difference between the inter-bank and open-market rates, to let the market forces determine the value, where letting the rupee to further depreciate in the inter-bank is further putting a pressure on the open market and has eventually resulted in their entrance into a vicious cycle," he said.
Moreover, political uncertainty in the South Asian country and global rise of the greenback are among the core reasons for the declining value of the local currency, Javed said.
"A 50-per cent fall is due to the global rise of the US dollar," the economist added.