KARACHI, May 13: As the dollar continues its unprecedented rise against rupee, importers of personal computers and accessories have cancelled orders placed with international suppliers for indefinite period.

This has caused more than 20 per cent increase in computer prices in the local market.

Local dealers and market players said the imports were unlikely to resume in the near term as the traders dealing on lower margins would first sell the machines already brought to the local market comparatively on higher prices.

“On an average we import 600,000 pieces of personal computers every year,” said Asif Shahzad of Lahore’s Decent Computers, one of the largest importers of the machine. “Since the dollar has jumped to Rs70, most of our colleagues are not able to meet the revised rates of the imports and finally cancelled the shipments.”

He said the Taiwan, Malaysia and some other South East Asian countries are the major suppliers of the product to Pakistan but downfall in local currency has compelled the local dealers to close their accounts with all these exporters of computers.

The value of dollar continued to rise for the last few weeks and finally touched the Rs70 mark against the rupee by the end of the last week. The trend also pushed the State Bank to stop exchange companies from taking the UK pound, euro and the UAE dirham out of the country.

The move is believed to give pedestal to the declining value of the rupee against the dollar as the central bank warned that the failure to comply with the instructions would attract severe regulatory action.

However, the dealers believe the declining value of the local currency has also damaged their trade in a big way.

“The pressure would obviously be passed on to local market, which would trickle down to the retail level,” said Feroz Ali, president, Karachi chapter of Pakistan Computer Association.

“The prices of computers in local market have started increasing and the trend is likely to continue in the days to come. There is almost 15 to 20 per cent jump in the prices of each product and brand,” he added.

As the importers predict increase in prices of computes and their accessories, the traders at Uni Centre, the country’s largest computer market, said not a single component of the machine was available on the prices tagged last week.

“And it’s quite natural that the prices at retail market are increasing,” said Nadeem Malik, president IT section of Karachi Electronics Dealers Association. “For instance prices of Pentium-4 has increased by at least Rs4,000 to Rs5,000 depending on the accessories installed.”

He said the prices were likely to increase further in the absence of fresh shipments as most of the traders would attempt to capitalise on the machines in stocks, imported before the dollar’s rise.