Business

KARACHI: Japanese companies operating in Pakistan are least interested in further investment to expand their businesses, while the country ranked lowest in the region. “Unstable security, high inflation and an unstable exchange rate are major business concerns for Japanese companies operating in Pakistan,” said an official Japanese government survey on Monday. The Japan External Trade Organisation (Jetro), the Japanese government’s …

ISLAMABAD: Expressing a need to restore confidence in the official functionaries, the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has asked the government to speed up taxation reforms and privatise loss-making state-owned enterprises, especially in the energy sector. Addressing a news conference on Monday after meeting with Commerce Minister Jam Kamal, FPCCI President Atif Ikram Sheikh said that …

ISLAMABAD: As development spending continued to falter in the first eight months of the current fiscal year, successive governments kept doling out funds for the discretionary schemes of parliamentarians, according to official data. In the past eight months, parliamentarians consumed Rs38 billion out of the allocated Rs90bn in the budget for their schemes, as per the latest data on development …

KARACHI: Extending the overnight losses, the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) remained under selling pressure dragging the benchmark KSE 100-share index below the 67,000 level on Monday. Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said a slowdown in GDP growth to 1pc in the second quarter of the current fiscal year compared to 2.2pc in the same period last year worried investors …

Pakistan has many economic strata — those who can afford six-figure Eid clothes without batting an eye and those who are among the least paid globally. A comparison in dollar terms of the average monthly salaries of different countries places Pakistan among the bottom three. The data, extracted from information provided by contributors to the numbeo.com website, is all the more …

“It feels stifling, knowing that someone can flip a switch, and all can just be taken away from you through no fault of your own,” says Akber Kazi, a content creator. Mr Kazi is part of the creator economy, which was globally valued at $250 billion in 2023 and is projected to nearly double to $480bn by 2027, according to …

ISLAMABAD: On its way to missing targets in the current financial year, Pakistan’s biggest challenge now is fiscal consolidation and reforms amid a weak coalition government and political instability stemming from accusations of electoral fraud, the Washington-based Institute of International Finance (IIF) has said. On the other hand, exchange rate, monetary policy, energy subsidies and state-owned enterprises (SOE) reforms are …

When tracing Pakistan’s progress, a predominantly agricultural country, we see that it transformed into a semi-industrialised economy, which then ushered in import-oriented and debt-driven growth with an increasingly vulnerable external sector. Stressing the need to accelerate export-led growth, Finance Minister Muhammed Aurangzeb said that import-led subsidised businesses were no longer sustainable. While the need to boost exports cannot be overemphasised, …

Early indicators suggest that the scale of charity and philanthropic donations may have decreased in 2024 compared to last year. However, a clearer picture will likely emerge shortly after Ramadan when accounts are consolidated. For organisations reporting an increase in collections, the spike would likely have been even greater had the overall trend been more robust. Leading philanthropic organisations like …

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has announced the commencement of a sweeping registration drive under the Tajir Dost Scheme, designed to integrate traders and wholesalers into the formal tax framework by April 30. Scheduled to start on April 1, this initiative facilitates free registration and extends a variety of tax-related benefits to incentivise participation. The FBR has warned that failure …