Rattling Dar’s comments

Rattling Dar’s comments, already in trouble for his non-performance, rattled account holders when he publicly stated that the dollars held by the commercial banks also belonged to the country. His statement caused a whiff of fear running through account holders maintaining dollar accounts in commercial banks. Dar already is notorious for confiscating dollars from private accounts in 1998 while he was finance minister in an earlier PMLN government. Dar was quickly reminded of his faux pas and he swiftly tried to control damage by stating his comment was greatly misconstrued and that nothing of the sort will happen. He took pains to explain that what he was clarifying was the positioning and placement of foreign exchange reserves of the country and had absolutely no intention to do anything funny with commercial foreign exchange accounts. He stated that whenever Pakistan’s reserves are quoted anywhere in the world the total figure is quoted and then a breakdown is given and that he had just given a breakdown. Rattling Dar’s comments castigated the attempt of some people who deliberately gave such a twist to his statement that rumours of the government mulling taking over dollars from commercial banks started circulating. TW

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