Business

NEW YORK: Oil prices were near flat on Wednesday, after earlier hitting a 10-month high, as a surprise build in US crude inventories offset expectations of tight crude supply for the rest of the year. International benchmark Brent futures dropped 7 cents to $91.99 a barrel by 12:48 p.m. EDT (1648 GMT). Its session high of $92.84 a barrel was …

LAHORE: Worried by prospects of spread of a deadly whitefly attack, pest management teams of the Punjab Agriculture Department have resorted to cluster spray as experts estimate that, so far, around half of the standing crop in hotspot areas may have been damaged. A spokesperson for the department said drones and high-pressure spray machines have been deployed to spray the …

WASHINGTON: American technology leaders including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai met with lawmakers at Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a closed-door forum that focused on regulating artificial intelligence. Lawmakers are grappling with how to mitigate the dangers of the emerging technology, which has experienced a boom in investment and consumer popularity …

ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) has formed a committee in collaboration with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan (ICAP) and the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (Pide) to promote corporatisation. It will be headed by SECP Executive Director Mussarat Jabeen and will have two more officers from the commission. Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq will head the committee …

Extreme heat and flooding could erase $65 billion in apparel export earnings from four Asian countries by 2030, as workers struggle under high temperatures and factories close, research from Schroders and Cornell University showed on Wednesday. The study also mapped out the supply chains of six unidentified global apparel brands operating in the four countries studied — Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan and …

The rupee continued to strengthen against the US dollar in the interbank market on Wednesday but fell in the open market. The development comes a day after the rupee rose 0.42 per cent in the interbank market to below 300, a barrier it crossed for the first time ever on Aug 24. According to the State Bank of Pakistan, the rupee gained …

LAHORE: The cotton crop in Punjab is facing an onslaught from whiteflies, which is proving to be a nightmare for growers and agriculture department high-ups, as well who have so far been expecting a good harvest this year, mainly because of supportive weather. The scale of the whitefly attack, which experts say has been caused by a sudden hike in temperatures …

KARACHI: The rupee continued to strengthen against the dollar in the interbank market on Tuesday, rising 0.42 per cent to below 300, a barrier it crossed for the first time ever on Aug 24. According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s data, the rupee closed at 299.89 on Tuesday compared to 301.16 a day ago. In the open market, however, …

ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Shamshad Akhtar has directed the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to prepare a proposal for revamping the tax system and increasing the tax-to-GDP ratio, which has remained stagnant for years, Dawn has learnt from official sources. The FBR officials, however, have expressed reservations about the feasibility and impact of the proposed restructuring plan and have suggested that policy reforms …

KARACHI: Remittances sent by overseas Pakistanis slightly increased by 3 per cent month-on-month in August while it tumbled by over 23pc year-on-year. However, the inflow of remittances during the first two months of the current fiscal year also fell by 21.6 per cent. The data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday showed that the remittances totalled …