Business

COPENHAGEN: Den­m­­ark on Wednesday inaugurated a project to store carbon dioxide 1,800 metres beneath the North Sea, becoming the first country in the world to bury CO2 imported from abroad. “Today we opened a new chapter for the North Sea, a green chapter,” Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik said at the inauguration ceremony in the town of Esbjerg in the west …

LAHORE: Over 3,000 used high-pressure gas meters (both industrial and commercial) and other precious material have either been ‘stolen, embezzled or misplaced’ allegedly by various officials in connivance with their seniors as well as the private people. Since the official sources term embezzlement of a large number of meters (total 3,100) worth millions a first-ever major scam in the history …

KARACHI: It’s time for the agriculture sector to move away from subsidies to achieve higher productivity through “demand-driven” business models. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Pakistan Agricultural Coalition (PAC) Strategy Adviser Kazim Saeed said the investment in the agriculture sector should purely be on a commercial basis. Sponsored by the country’s leading business groups for developing commercially scalable …

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Monday restrained the JS Group from acquiring majority shares of BankIslami till next hearing. A single-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui also issued notices to JS Bank, Jahangir Siddiqui & Company Ltd, State Bank of Pakistan, BankIslami and other defendants for a date to be fixed in two weeks. The AKD Investment …

KARACHI: Ghandhara Nissan Ltd (GNL), the assembler of Dongfeng and JAC vehicles, on Monday announced production suspension from March 6-10 due to a shortage of parts. In a stock filing, the company also informed that from March 13 it would start production activities on an alternative weekly basis until further notice. The company said its vendors continued to face major …

KARACHI: Following Pakistan’s exit from the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list, a global body of banking supervisory authorities has acknowledged the progress made by the country in the overall regulation of the financial affairs slightly lowering the risk score of the country. However, experts believe that the recently-released Basel AML [anti-money laundering] Index briefing on Pakistan would hardly benefit the …

ISLAMABAD: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) on Monday rubber-stamped the government decision of imposing Rs3.82 per unit surcharge on electricity consumers across the country for four months with retrospective effect from March 1 and then continue it at a reduced rate of Rs1.43 per unit throughout the next fiscal year. The additional surcharges have been imposed on the …

The story of Pakistan’s power sector is a tale of bad policy choices made by successive governments. Inefficient, loss-making distribution companies have been at the centre of this story, which has accumulated a huge power sector debt of nearly Rs3 trillion over the last decade despite frequent tariff increases. Last summer, the base tariff was raised by 40 per cent …

On the insistence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the federal government and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) did something last week that will deepen the ongoing political and administrative chaos, cripple the economy and multiply the miseries of 230 million Pakistanis. But they had to. Beggars cannot be choosers. The federal government slapped a permanent debt servicing surcharge …

The rupee continued to recover in the interbank market on Monday, closing at Rs277.92 per dollar, data shared by the State Bank of Pakistan showed. This equates to an appreciation of 54 paise, or 0.19 per cent, from Friday’s close of Rs278.46 a dollar. Tresmark’s Head of Strategy Komal Mansoor said the rupee appreciated on market expectations that a staff-level …