KARACHI (November 09 2002) : Pakistan's foreign exchange reserves have gone further up as the flow of remittances from the overseas Pakistanis continues, which is helping the rupee to remain strong against the dollar.
The country's foreign exchange reserves rose to $ 8.542 billion from 8.532 billion dollars last week – an increase of 10 million dollars.
The State Bank's reserves holding was at 6.365 billion dollars, while other banks reserves were at 2.177 billion dollars.
The government hopes that by the end of year 2002, the reserves would be 9 billion dollars while at the end of the fiscal year these would be 10 billion dollars.
In the last six months the remittances from the overseas Pakistanis have tripled which is a major reason for the increase in the forex reserves.
During the first quarter of the current fiscal year, remittances stood at $1.053 billion as against $340 million in the same period of last year.
