HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HCCI) believes latest devaluation of Pakistani rupee versus US dollar will lead to brain drain and the exacerbating economic conditions may cause anarchy.

HCCI president Adeel Siddiqui said in a statement issued here on Monday that the US dollar’s rise against Pakistani rupee, gaining Rs7.3 in interbank trade would affect everything.

“Our country in fact recorded the highest inflation on July 18, which will cause billions of rupees losses to importers in a single day rather in a few minutes. This takes new rate of dollar to Rs218.30,” he added.

“The devaluation in rupee makes the country less attractive to workers and force Pakistani workers to prefer to work abroad. It will eventually result in brain drain, which in fact spells demise of Pakistani industry,” said Mr Siddiqui.

“How will we be able to produce technical manpower when our own workforce starts leaving the country,” he said.

He said that the consequent economic conditions were in fact now posing risk of anarchy. Current appreciation in dollar, he said, would make exports more competitive which would appear cheaper to foreign buyers.

“It will increase demand for exports and our assets will become inexpensive to foreign buyers from business point of view,” he said.

He said that since the entire world was facing recession, the devaluation would not help boost exports’ demand.

“Pakistani industrialists are in fact facing a Godzilla like economic crunch which is evident from this historic devaluation, higher mark-up rate, higher electricity tariff amid unavailability of gas resource.

We have not seen such situation in the past,” he said.

He said that devaluation was aimed at meeting a certain exchange rate target and that would not be appropriate for economy. “Perhaps this devaluation of rupee is taking place as per target set by IMF,” he noted.

The HCCI president deplored the fact that dollar’s upward journey had rendered everything null and void as far as decline in oil prices was concerned. “We have seen crude oil prices falling in the international market recently.

But with this depreciation in rupee, there will be no international market correction impact for us,” he said.

He said this trend of economy, however, would only be suitable for trade alone instead of industries.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2022