Author: admin
ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Commerce Jam Kamal Khan reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to expanding bilateral trade and industrial cooperation with Belarus during a detailed meeting with the Belarusian Ambassador, A Metelitsa. The meeting covered a wide-ranging agenda focused on reviving key industrial projects, enhancing textile collaboration, exploring cotton sourcing alternatives, and boosting workforce exchange between the two nations. Central to the discussion was the reactivation of a Belarus-supported industrial plant in Balochistan— a project initially linked to DMV and Omni group. Though previously delayed, the project has now regained momentum. Minister Kamal emphasised that the government of Pakistan prefers utilising existing…
KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), through its Taxpayers Services Wing, organized a tax awareness session at Capital University of Science & Technology. The session was attended by the President Hammad Qureshi, Vice President Ammad Azhar, General Secretary MAmmara Khan and university students. The FBR team included Second Secretary (Tax Education) Zafar Iqbal Khan, Inspector Salman Khaliq, Coordinator Zia Farooqi and staff Manzoor Hussain. During the session, Second Secretary (Tax Education) Zafar Iqbal Khan gave a comprehensive presentation on the tax structure and overall working of FBR. He highlighted the various measures being taken by FBR to enhance the…
KARACHI: The government’s decision to deregulate prices of non-essential medicines has helped restore the availability of critical drugs across Pakistan, ending months of shortages that had severely impacted public health, experts and industry officials said on Monday. “The policy shift has addressed critical supply gaps. Medicines that had vanished due to unviable prices are now back, offering relief to patients who were left at the mercy of black markets or counterfeits,” said Tauqeer-ul-Haq, Chairman of the Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA), while speaking to reporters here. For years, pharmaceutical firms were unable to produce dozens of drugs— ranging from painkillers…
LONDON: US stocks fell with the dollar on Monday as markets reacted to the United States losing its last gold-standard sovereign bond rating over a debt pile that could balloon further. The downgrade by Moody’s dealt a blow to markets, which had enjoyed a healthy run-up last week after Washington and China reached a deal to temporarily slash tit-for-tat tariffs. US stocks were down in midday trading, led by the tech-heavy Nasdaq, which fell around half a percent. That mirrored losses in Asia, where Tokyo and Hong Kong closed down. In Europe, London and Frankfurt erased early losses to close…
KARACHI: The outflow of profits and dividends on foreign investments jumped by 108 per cent during the first ten months of the current fiscal year over the same period of the last fiscal year. After the improvement of inflows, particularly higher remittances, the State Bank has eased the outflow of profits from the country. During the current fiscal year — FY25 — the outflow of profits was much higher than the previous year. One of the main reasons was reportedly the influence of the IMF, which made possible the profit outflow on foreign investment. The data issued by the State…
ISLAMABAD: The government got an apathetic response to its auction for three inefficient power plants, compelling it to go for a second round of bidding by the end of this month. Only a single bidder — Siddiqsons from Karachi — came up with a bid for Jamshoro Power Company Ltd (JPCL). Two other plants — Muzaffargarh and Faisalabad — did not fetch even a single offer. The government set a combined reserve price of Rs26.625 billion for the three plants with 2,362MW of cumulative generation capacity. The auction was called through a ‘single-stage two envelop’ bid to ensure transparency, said…
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is seeking loans totalling up to $350 million from commercial banks in the United Arab Emirates to meet its external financing needs. According to informed banking sources, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has been in discussions with these banks to revive their loan portfolio with Pakistan, and the finalisation of the loan is expected to occur very soon. In the first three quarters of the current fiscal year, the government received about $504m from foreign lenders (mostly UAE-based), showing a minor recovery from commercial banks that had stayed away from financing Pakistan last year. The government has budgeted $3.8bn…
WASHINGTON: Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) opened high-level policy talks in Islamabad on Monday to discuss the upcoming federal budget for fiscal year 2025-26, officials said. The current round of discussions, which will continue till May 23, will help determine whether Pakistan’s proposed budget meets the fiscal and reform targets agreed with the IMF under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF). An IMF delegation arrived earlier in Islamabad for the formal policy-level negotiations on budget finalisation, after last week technical discussions held via video link amid heightened tensions between India and Pakistan. The Islamabad talks focus on revenue targets,…
When a T-4 training jet plunged into a reservoir in Aichi prefecture last week, killing at least one crew member, it reignited concerns over the safety of Japan’s military aviation.The crash, part of a troubling series of fatal accidents in recent years, has shaken public trust and underlined the recruitment challenges facing the country’s self-defence forces.The T-4 aircraft, carrying two crew members, went down just two minutes after taking off from Komaki Air Base last Wednesday. Search teams have recovered the body of one crew member, while efforts continue to locate the other in the murky waters of the reservoir.Analysts…
The earnings outlook for Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers remains cloudy, as their profit margins further decline amid fierce price competition in the world’s largest auto market, according to JPMorgan Chase.Mainland China’s automotive assemblers offered a record high 16.8 per cent average discount last month to sustain their sales growth, compared with 16.3 per cent in March, according to a recent report by the US investment bank. It has been tracking the country’s biweekly EV price-change information since 2017. The average discount in 2024 was 8.3 per cent, according to the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).That finding exacerbates bearish sentiment…