Pakistani Rupee (PKR)

About the Pakistani Rupee

The Pakistani Rupee (PKR) is the official currency of Pakistan, issued by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and written Rs before the amount. Under ISO 4217 the rupee divides into 100 paisa, though the State Bank of Pakistan withdrew all decimal paisa coins from circulation on 1 October 2014, leaving the one-rupee coin as the smallest denomination now in everyday use.

Pakistan operates what the State Bank of Pakistan calls a market-based flexible exchange rate system: the rupee's value against other currencies is set by supply and demand in the interbank market rather than by an administered rate, and generally reflects the country's external balance-of-payments position. SBP says its own role is limited to avoiding disorderly market conditions and building foreign-exchange reserve buffers without suppressing the underlying trend, so the exchange rate serves as a first line of defence against external shocks.

Pakistan initially circulated Reserve Bank of India banknotes overprinted for local use after independence in 1947, under the Pakistan (Monetary System and Reserve Bank) Order, 1947. The State Bank of Pakistan Order, promulgated 12 May 1948, established SBP with the duty to regulate the issue of banknotes; the Government of Pakistan issued the country's first Pakistan-printed notes on 1 October 1948, and SBP's own first-generation series followed from 1 March 1949. The State Bank of Pakistan Act 1956, as since amended, remains SBP's governing statute today.

At its meeting of 27 July 2026, the State Bank of Pakistan's Monetary Policy Committee unanimously held the policy rate at 11.5 percent, judging that stance appropriate to guide inflation toward its 5–7 percent medium-term target; headline inflation had eased to 11.1 percent year-on-year in June 2026, down from 11.7 percent the month before. SBP's statement reported that its foreign-exchange reserves had cleared the end-June 2026 target of US$18 billion and stood at around US$17.3 billion as of 17 July 2026 after recent debt repayments, with reserves targeted to reach US$20.20 billion by the end of December 2026, and noted that Standard & Poor's had upgraded Pakistan's sovereign credit rating to "B".

Pakistan's current, fifth-generation banknote series began on 13 August 2005 with the country's first Rs 20 note, followed by new 10, 100, 500 and 5,000-rupee notes issued in November 2006, and Optical Variable Ink added to the Rs 500 note in January 2010 to help the public check its authenticity. Coins in regular circulation today are Re 1, Rs 2, Rs 5 and Rs 10, after the State Bank of Pakistan demonetized the decimal paisa coin series on 1 October 2014.