March 15, 2006	Wednesday	Safar 14, 1427

KARACHI, March 14: The Pakistani rupee eased on Tuesday as importers bought dollars to clear payments, but dealers expected the rupee to steady in the near term. The rupee closed at 60.05/07 to the dollar, down from Monday’s close of 60.00/02.

“There was pretty high demand for the dollar today from importers, and a couple of oil import payments as well,” said a dealer at a major local bank.

“Payments worth at least $70 million were made today, which put pressure on the rupee,” he said, adding that on a more average day payments of $30-40 million might fall due.

But dealers saw the demand for dollars abating. “There won’t be such a high dollar demand daily, and routine demand should be met by regular dollar inflows,” said a second dealer.

Dollar supplies from remittances sent by Pakistanis overseas and exporter-led sales have been healthy in recent months, helping to keep the rupee stable.

In the money market, short-term rates were flat ahead of a Treasury bill auctions on Wednesday.

Overnight call rates ended unchanged at around 7.5 per cent. The State Bank of Pakistan is scheduled to auction Rs6 billion ($100 million) worth of its three-, six- and 12-month Treasury bills on Wednesday, with settlement on Thursday.

Dealers said they expected yields to remain flat at Wednesday’s auction.

At the last T-bill auction on March 1, the central bank sold its benchmark six-month paper at cut-off and weighted average yields of 8.2910 per cent.

—Reuters