The Pakistani rupee closed at a record closing low on Thursday, breaching a previous low set days after Pakistan was pitched into the centre of a global storm by al Qaeda's attacks on the United States in September 2001.

The rupee closed at 64.50/55 to the dollar, compared with Wednesday's close of 64.32/64.37, surpassing the previous closing low of 64.46 on Sept. 22, 2001.

"The demand for the dollar is huge, and the inflows are certainly not sufficient to meet that," said a dealer at a local bank.

"If the situation persists, we may even see the rupee breaching the 65 per dollar mark in a few weeks," he said.

During the day, the rupee traded as low as 64.68, before central bank intervention helped it recover, dealers said.

"The central bank was seen selling dollars in the market, which pulled the rupee back a bit," said a dealer at a foreign bank.

The slide in the rupee's value accelerated in recent days, with the currency down 2.9 percent to the dollar so far this month and 4.7 percent this year.

 The rupee has been under pressure from increased demand from importers, particularly for oil payments.

Record high global oil prices have already contributed the most in pushing Pakistan's trade deficit for the first nine months of the 2007/08 fiscal year (July-June) to $14.48 billion, almost $1 billion more than for the whole of 2006/07.

Pakistan paid $7.4 billion in the July-March period for imports of crude oil and petroleum products, compared with $5.3 billion in the year-ago period, official data shows. - Reuters