Business

KARACHI: Foreign exchange reserves of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) increased by $394 million during the week ended on April 14, reported the central bank on Thursday. The SBP reserves have been showing some improvement following the inflow of a $1.3bn loan from China in three instalments in recent weeks. Pakistan depends largely on China for commercial and non-commercial …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s exports of non-textile products fell 5.81 per cent year-on-year to $8.58 billion in the first nine months of the current fiscal year owing to the rising cost of production and a dip in demand from the international market. The stagnation in export proceeds of the non-textile sector was noted since the start of the current fiscal year as …

ISLAMABAD: K-Electric has sought the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority’s (Nepra) approval for extracting Rs6.636 billion additional funds from its consumers at the rate of Rs4.49 per unit for the electricity used in March. Nepra has accepted the KE’s tariff petition under the monthly fuel cost adjustment (FCA) mechanism and fixed a public hearing for May 3. The regulator would …

Share prices at the Pakistan Stock Exchange rose on Thursday with the benchmark KSE-100 index gaining 508.48 points, or 1.26 per cent, to reach 41,007.82 points. The market opened at 40,499.34 points and jumped from the get-go, and at one point had created a daily high of 41,086.67 before settling slightly lower. First National Equities CEO Ali Malik said the …

Weekly inflation measured by the Sensitive Price Index (SPI) hit an all-time high of 47.23 per cent year-on-year (YoY) for the week ending on April 19 — driven mainly by a major increase in food prices — data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) on Thursday showed. On a week-on-week basis, short-term inflation increased by 0.51pc as food …

KARACHI: Code writers making top-drawer artificial intelligence (AI) tools that’ve gained traction at a mass scale worldwide don’t always belong to Silicon Valley. Some of these geeks can be found in quintessentially middle-class Karachi neighbourhoods like Gulistan-e-Jauhar. They went to local universities and still beat Ivy League graduates to the top of the AI hill. AIAV, a personalisation engine created …

ISLAMABAD: In an apparent deviation from the law, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is reported to have extended Rs239 billion credit to the PMLN-led coalition government in January-February to meet ballooning debt servicing requirements of the domestic commercial banks. Under the State Bank of Pakistan Act amended in 2022 on the dictation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), government …

Oil prices were down in Asian trade on Thursday as the US dollar strengthened on rate-hike expectations and after recent economic data from the US and China did not do enough to encourage expectations that demand will improve. Brent crude futures lost 78 cents or 0.94 per cent to trade at $82.34 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) futures …

Pakistan has placed its first order for discounted Russian crude oil under a new deal struck between Islamabad and Moscow, State Minister for Petroleum Musadik Malik has said. “Our orders are in, we have placed that already,” he told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday night, adding that one cargo of the commodity will dock at the Karachi port in May. The …

Share prices at the Pakistan Stock Exchange rose on Thursday with the benchmark KSE-100 index gaining 508.48 points, or 1.26 per cent, to reach 41,007.82 points. The market opened at 40,499.34 points and jumped from the get-go, and at one point had created a daily high of 41,086.67 before settling slightly lower. First National Equities CEO Ali Malik said the …