Business

Pakistan will be required to give an assurance that its balance of payments deficit is fully financed for the remaining period of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, the lender’s resident representative said. The external financing is one of the last in a string of prior actions the lender wants Islamabad to complete before it clears funding stalled since late …

KARACHI: Social engineering, which involves cybercriminals manipulating people into giving up confidential financial information, has become a “big and very significant trend” in the Pakistani market, according to Visa Inc, a global provider of rails for digital payments. Speaking to Dawn on the sidelines of a recent security summit in Dubai, the company’s regional risk officer Charles Lobo said individuals and small …

ISLAMABAD: The government will resume virtual talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday to finalise revenue and expenditure figures for the next four months, a senior government official told Dawn on Saturday.     The IMF team, led by its Pakistan mission chief Nathan Porter, held talks with finance ministry officials for a couple of days, followed by a last …

KARACHI: Despite fiscal tightening, the government’s borrowing for budgetary support surged to Rs1.8 trillion during the first seven and half months of FY23 against a net retirement of Rs245.8 billion during the same period last year. The massive borrowing reflects the growing cash requirement of the government while the IMF is pressing it to reduce expenses and generate more revenues. …

LAHORE: As short-term inflation, measured by Sensitive Price Index, hit 41.07 per cent in the week ended on March 2, life for the overwhelming majority of Pakistan becomes next to impossible as international lenders have also warned against looming social unrest. Also, the Consumer Price Index for February jumped to 31.50pc —the worst since June 1975. It was followed by …

KARACHI: As flour millers resumed operations and restored supplies to markets on Saturday, a day after talks with the Sindh government, retailers have yet to lower prices. On Thursday, more than 90 flour mills in Karachi closed production and suspended supplies after the provincial administration sealed several mills; the millers have also complained that the Sindh government was supplying inferior-quality …

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that after every two weeks, he has to appear before a National Accountability Board (NAB) court in Islamabad for the crime of providing 100MW of electricity from the Nooriabad Power Plant to Karachi. Speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the 18th ‘My Karachi — Oasis of Harmony’ at the Expo …

LAHORE: White lint stock is piling up with the ginners as textile millers are wary of making the purchases because of what market players believe liquidity crunch and high markup rate besides other factors. Ginning units across the country are holding 449,315 bales on March 3, 379 per cent up against 93,833 bales on the same date last year, reveals …

KARACHI: A construction slowdown amid uncertain economic conditions reduced the demand for cement by nine per cent in February and 13.4pc in 8MFY23. In February, total cement despatches stood at 4.040 million tonnes as against 4.348m tonnes, down by 7pc. Local sales were 3.590m tonnes compared to 3.943m tonnes in February 2022. However, exports increased by 11pc to 449,940 tonnes …

Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd on Friday approved a rollover of a $1.3 billion loan for cash-strapped Pakistan, which will help shore up its depleting foreign exchange reserves, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said. The facility will be disbursed in three instalments. The first one of $500 million has been received by the State Bank of Pakistan, Dar said …