October 9, 2002	Wednesday	Sha’aban 2, 1423

KARACHI, Oct 8: Banks borrowed Rs15 billion more from the SBP discount window on Tuesday to meet their liquidity requirements.

On Monday also the banks had resorted to Rs12.1 billion due to ongoing liquidity shortage.

Senior bankers said what has aggravated the cash crisis is that the SBP continues to make dollar/rupee swaps with the banks — selling dollars in forward and buying them in ready. When the SBP sells dollars in ready it naturally dries up the rupee liquidity whatever of it is left in the market. “I do not know why the SBP is doing this,” said an annoyed treasurer of a big foreign bank.

“Instead of coming to the rescue of the market the State Bank continues to make forward dollar buying,” he said but could not quantify the SBP forward buying in the past few days. The market has been short of liquidity due to a number of reasons including tax and Hajj payments at September-end; withdrawal of some big deposits from a state-run bank by some public sector institutions and because of “speculative bidding” to which the banks resorted in the last few auctions of treasury bills.

Bankers say the liquidity crunch currently faced by them may be over or at least subside next week with an inflow of Rs17 billion through maturity of treasury bills sold earlier by the State Bank.