04 December 2004	Saturday	21 Shawwal 1425

KARACHI, Dec 3: The rupee, on Friday, shot up to 59.47 a US dollar in the inter bank market from 59.59 on Thursday, showing a gain of 12 paisa or 0.2 per cent in a single session.

Senior bankers said that the rupee moved up as the market received an inflow of $21 million through state-run Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd. The state-run company receives foreign exchange from other telephone companies around the world for hosting phone calls made into Pakistan from abroad.

It pays to such companies, in return, when they host the telephone calls made into their respective companies from Pakistan. Bankers said that the rupee hit an intra-day high of 59.40 a US dollar when the market got wind of the PTCL inflow through National Bank of Pakistan, but it fell slightly afterwards and closed at 59.47 a dollar.

The rupee has so far recovered 190 paisa or 3 per cent of its lost value against the dollar since November 1 when the State Bank started selling dollars into the market for oil payments. Earlier, it had lost 5.5 per cent value to the dollar in July-October when the trade deficit had risen four-fold to $1.432 billion compared with a year-ago period.

Senior bankers said there was no big demand for dollars in the market on Friday except for an $8m-$10m demand from a gas company. They said that importers remained on the sidelines and exporters accelerated the sale of overdue export bills anticipating a further fall in the dollar value.

The 3 per cent gain that the rupee has seen since November 1 against the US dollar has not come without a price. Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves declined by $266 million to $11.987 billion as on November 27 from $12.253 billion at the end of October, reflecting the impact of the SBP's dollar selling for oil imports.