Pakistani Rupee (PKR)

The rupee is a term used for various currencies in several countries, such as India, which has the Indian Rupee, Nepal, which has the Rupee Nepalese, Sri Lanka, which has the Sri Lanka Rupee, in addition to Pakistan, Mauritius, Seychelles, Indonesia and the Maldives. The Rupee name comes from a Sanskrit word meaning "silver".

This unit is divided into one hundred smaller units called paise In some other countries such as The Seychelles islands, it is called cents much like the US. Sem in Indonesia and Iaaris in the Maldives. Its symbol is basically the same for all countries: Rs, differing only in India.

The Pakistani Rupee, is divided into 100 paise in coins and there are 1, 10, 20, 100, 500, 1000 and 5000 in Rs notes.

In its origins in the sixteenth century the rupee corresponded to the weight of 178 grains, or, 11.5344 grams of silver. Since then, the coin has circulated and survived during the period of British India. The currency only suffered its first casualty in the nineteenth century, when the world economy decided to adopt the gold standard and all the currencies based on silver lost value quickly.

Currently, Pakistan is one of the countries with the highest rate of economic growth in the Middle East. For example, in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 they maintained a growth rate of its economy of 7% per year, which was halted only because of the global crisis of 2008.

Its good level of growth is old and dates back to the 40s of last century when the average annual growth was higher than many developed countries. After decades of growth, the country was hit by a series of misguided public policies that only did harm to its economy by reducing the economic aggression and investment of its people in the late 1990s.

The recovery came only after a series of economic reforms that have been implemented from the 2000’s Such measures had a very positive effect and Pakistan returned to growth after several years of recession. One of the sectors that has grown and strengthened the Pakistani Rupee is the branch of manufacturing and also financial services. The change in key lines of business also contributed to this: in recent years Pakistan has ceased to be a strong economy based on agriculture and went on to earn revenues increasingly industrialized goods and services. Today the service sector accounts for 53% and agriculture for only 20% of Pakistan's GDP, which is about 230 billion dollars, which gives them the position number 44 among the largest economies in the world.

The country also received massive foreign direct investment in several areas such as:

• Telecommunications
• real estate and energy
• software
• automobiles
• textiles
• cement
• fertilizers
• steel
• shipbuilding
• defense industry and aerospace industries.

China and Pakistan also recently signed some valuable contracts.

Another good news for Pakistan was that as a result of these good practices, and good response of the economy, foreign exchange reserves have improved considerably, further strengthening its currency relative to other economies in the region and the world. But much remains to be done since the poverty rate is above 20%.