Pakistan appointed a new finance minister on Wednesday, as the South Asian nation struggles to recover from an economic crisis worsened by deadly floods.

Ishaq Dar, a senior figure in the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, has been finance minister three times, and he is credited with overcoming economic turmoil during his previous stints in the role.

In his first remarks, Dar on Wednesday said he would work to rein in inflation and cut interest rates, calling the rupee currency undervalued and promising a strong response to resolve the nation’s worst economic crisis.

His challenges will be to convince the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to soften some of its conditions under which Pakistan received a $6 billion bailout in 2019 and to deal with the economic devastation caused by unprecedented flooding.

He will also have to tackle a sharp rise in inflation and stabilize the rupee after it plummeted to a record record low of 240 against the U.S. dollar last week.

Dar’s appointment comes as Pakistan struggles with the aftermath of historic flooding, which has killed 1,663 people, affected tens of million others and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The government has estimated losses of $30 billion.

He was sworn in during a brief ceremony attended by President Arif Alvi and Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif. On Tuesday, Sharif praised Dar’s predecessor, Miftah Ismail, for playing a key role in averting a possible default because of his brilliant handling of the ministry in recent months.

Dar, an accountant, faces a corruption case and he briefly appeared in an anti-graft court on Wednesday. "I was implicated in a fake case," Dar told reporters.

He returned to Pakistan on Monday after five years of self-exile in the U.K., saying he had been unable to return because the former administration, led by Imran Khan, had canceled his passport.

On Wednesday, Dar said that as finance minister he had averted a possible economic crisis after 1998, when the international community imposed sanctions on Pakistan for conducting nuclear weapons tests.

Taming inflation, cutting rates

In his fourth time in the role, Dar must tackle a balance of payment crisis, foreign reserves that cover barely a month’s imports, historic lows in the rupee, inflation exceeding 27% and the aftermath of devastating floods.

"We will control inflation," Dar told reporters, referring to the deep-rooted challenges ahead, in televised comments made after he was sworn in. "We will bring interest rates down."

He had a warning for currency market speculators, saying that the Pakistani rupee was undervalued. "Our currency right now is not at the place where it should be, it is undervalued," said Dar, who is known to favor currency market intervention to keep the rupee stable.

"I hope the speculators will stop. I think they have already got it and we are seeing the rupee rising," he added. "No one will be allowed to play with the Pakistani currency."

A member of parliament’s upper house, Dar got the job after his predecessor, Ismail became the fifth to quit in less than four years, amid persistent economic turbulence.

The rupee has been gaining firmly ahead of his appointment and stocks responded positively before Wednesday’s swearing-in.

Wrecked economy

Analysts say Dar’s key mandate is to halt inflation that mainly stems from his predecessor’s unpopular decisions to stick to preconditions set by the IMF, including rolling back subsidies made by Khan’s government.

Sharif’s coalition government says it inherited a wrecked economy after Khan’s ouster in a vote of no-confidence in April, a charge the former premier denies.

As the new government took over, the IMF’s $6 billion bailout package was in the doldrums because of the lack of an agreed policy framework.

Last month the IMF board approved the program’s seventh and eighth reviews, allowing the release of more than $1.1 billion.

The tranche, said former finance chief Ismail, was likely to be boosted after Pakistan sought help to remedy economic losses caused by the unprecedented floods.

The disaster could cut gross domestic product (GDP) growth below 3%, down from 5% estimated for fiscal 2022-23, the government has said.