The Pakistani rupee registered marginal improvement against the US dollar in the open market on Friday, while the local currency closed lower for the fifth consecutive session in the inter-market.

During the day, currency dealers Business Recorder reached out to said the rupee was quoted at 281.5 for selling and 278.5 for buying purposes for customers.

At the end of trading, the currency closed at the same rates, according to data provided by the Exchange Companies Association of Pakistan (ECAP).

Meanwhile, the rupee closed lower at 280.57 level against the greenback in the inter-bank market on Friday.

The gap between rates in the inter-bank and open markets is required to be less than 1.25% under one of the structural benchmarks set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF mission, led by Nathan Porter, will visit Pakistan on November 2 to discuss the first review of the country’s $3 billion standby arrangement (SBA). A successful review is crucial to pave the way for further inflows into the country, which deals with low foreign exchange reserves.

Meanwhile, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc warned that gains in Pakistan’s rupee, which emerged among the world’s top-performing currencies in the past two months, will be short-lived owing to its financing risks, reported Bloomberg on Thursday.

Goldman analysts, led by Kamakshya Trivedi, were quoted in a Wednesday report by Bloomberg as saying that “the recent appreciation of the Pakistani rupee will likely be short-lived, given soaring interest costs and only short-term arrangements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and bilateral financing to support the external balance.”

The rupee recently saw one of the longest appreciation runs against the US dollar, which came on the back of measures announced by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and the interim government.

However, in the past few sessions, it has lost around 1%.