IN 1918 a British army officer brought his frayed football to be repaired at a factory in Sialkot, a city in what is now Pakistan. Although more accustomed to making tennis racquets and cricket bats, a local artisan was nonetheless able to restitch the ball and, even better, replicate it, according to the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Over the next 100 years, the city has prospered as a manufacturing hub, making surgical, leather and sporting goods. It exported over 920 tonnes of sports balls in the first three months of 2018, according to Sialkot Dry Port Trust. It is even the source of the (stitch-less) Adidas footballs that will be trapped, dribbled and passed in the World Cup beginning this week.

Despite this sporting contribution, however, Pakistan’s exports as a whole have lagged behind the country’s aspirations. Its import bill, including onerous payments for oil, has expanded uncomfortably, raising its current-account deficit to 5.3% of GDP this fiscal year (which ends this month), according to Standard Chartered, a bank. That, in turn, has put heavy pressure on the rupee. It stumbled by about 5% during trading on June 11th, the third big drop since December.

This was described as a deliberate “devaluation” by almost everyone but the central bank, which maintains that the currency is left largely to market forces, even as it has squandered its foreign-exchange reserves (down from $19bn in 2016 to $10bn this month) in an effort to prop it up. This fear of falling probably reflected political pressure from the outgoing government, which saw a strong rupee as a sign of economic prowess. It completed its term at the end of May and will contest a general election on July 25th. In the meantime, the country is in the hands of a technocratic “caretaker government”. It is a good moment, then, to let the currency slip.

It may slip further. The oil price remains painfully high and the central bank’s fire-power is even more limited than the headline data suggest: if its hard-currency liabilities are deducted from its hard-currency assets, its “net” foreign-exchange reserves are now negative, points out Bilal Khan of Standard Chartered (see chart).