Business

A crucial tax amendment bill to fulfil the conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to revive a stalled loan programme that the country needs to stave off default was presented in both houses of parliament on Wednesday. Finance Minister Ishaq Dar introduced the Finance (Supplementary) Bill 2023 first in the National Assembly and then in the Senate. Both the …

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Teleco­mmunication Authority (PTA) has laun­ched a centralised platform to counter cyber attacks on telecom infrastructure. The National Telecom Security Operations Center (NTSOC) has been launched with an aim to improve the security of telecom infrastructure and build a “secure and resilient cyberspace for Pakistan,” according to a statement released by the PTA. The NTSOC will be the …

Inflation in Pakistan could average 33 per cent in the first half of 2023 before trending lower, and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) alone is unlikely to put the economy back on track, a senior economist with Moody’s Analytics told Reuters. “Our view is that an IMF bailout alone isn’t going to be enough to get the economy …

KARACHI: The latest increase in gas prices seems to have pitched the industrialists of Punjab against those of Sindh. Newspaper ads by the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association-North demand that the government do away with different gas rates for the export-oriented industrial units of Punjab and Sindh by adopting a uniform price of $7 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu). …

KARACHI: The latest increase in gas prices seems to have pitched the industrialists of Punjab against those of Sindh. Newspaper ads by the All Pakistan Textile Mills Association-North demand that the government do away with different gas rates for the export-oriented industrial units of Punjab and Sindh by adopting a uniform price of $7 per million British thermal unit (mmBtu). …

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet on Monday increased natural gas prices in the range of 16 per cent to 112.32pc with retrospective effect from Jan 1 for six months in a bid to raise an additional Rs310 billion from the majority of domestic and all other categories of consumers to secure early disbursement of $1.2 billion …

WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Pakistan resumed their talks on Monday, with Islamabad hoping that these virtual discussions lead to a deal that eases up ever-increasing pressure on the country’s ailing economy. In Islamabad, Finance Secretary Hamed Yaqoob Sheikh told Reuters the “duration (of the talks) cannot be confirmed but we intend to wrap these up at the …

Pakistan plans to quadruple its domestic coal-fired capacity to reduce power generation costs and will not build new gas-fired plants in the coming years, Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan told Reuters on Monday, as it seeks to ease a crippling foreign-exchange crisis. A shortage of natural gas, which accounts for over a third of the country’s power output, plunged large areas into …

Shares at the Pakistan Stock Exchange plunged on Tuesday with the benchmark KSE-100 index sliding over 500 points as analysts attributed the slump to weakening macroeconomic indicators and uncertainty over a pending review with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the release of a $1.2 billion tranche. The KSE-100 index closed down 566 points, or 1.36 per cent. “Weak remittances …

Global rating agency Fitch on Tuesday downgraded Pakistan’s long-term foreign currency issuer default rating (IDR) to ‘CCC-’ from ‘CCC+’, citing further worsening in liquidity and policy risks along with pressure on foreign exchange reserves. The drop comes four months after Fitch revised down the ranking to CCC+. The agency did not assign any outlook since typically it does not assign outlooks to sovereigns …