KARACHI: The local currency lost about eight per cent against the US dollar in the calendar year 2013, mainly because of fast depletion of foreign exchange reserves of the State Bank.

It was also noted that both inter-bank and open markets witnessed almost the same size of deprecation during the year.

However, since the present government assumed power in the mid of the year, speculative forces exerted greater pressure and the rupee’s depreciation rose even higher than 12pc.

During the last couple of months, the government — with the help of State Bank, private banks and currency dealers — made it possible to reduce the size of depreciation from 12pc to 8pc.

“We traded dollar at Rs105.35 at the end of the day while the price of the greenback the same day last year was Rs97.15,” said Atif Ahmed, a currency dealer in the inter-bank market.

He said the local currency depreciated by 8.4pc, or Rs8.20, against the dollar since Dec 31, 2012 to Dec 31, 2013.

The dollar story in the open market is not different. On Tuesday, the dollar was ended at Rs105.30 with a depreciation of about 8pc against the dollar. “On Jan 1, 2013 the dollar was traded at Rs98.40 while it shot up to Rs111 in the second half of this calendar year, then finally settled at Rs105.30 on the last day of the year,” said Anwar Jamal, a currency dealer in the open market.

The country’s reserves remained under tremendous pressure during the year despite an agreement with the International Monetary Fund for over $6 billion.

The reserves of the central bank were the real cause of concern since the holdings of private banks were much better. At the end of this calendar year private banks succeeded to maintain the same level of reserves as they did a year earlier.

The SBP reserves were $8.987bn at the end of December 2012 which fell to $3.192bn on Dec 20, 2013, a loss of $5.795bn.

Private banks’ reserves were $4.897bn against last year’s $4.871bn.