Business

KARACHI: The Pakistan Tea Association (PTA) has urged the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to remove the anomaly relating to withholding tax on import of bulk packing tea, which is a raw material for all importers. The association in a press release on Monday pointed out there was an ambiguity due to two different slabs for withholding tax at import …

• Total car sales rise to 126,679 units in 10MFY21 • Limited factory hours during Ramazan result in drop of auto sales month-on-month in April KARACHI: Backed by low interest rates, the auto sector posted a positive performance in the first 10 months of the current fiscal year with the jeep segment achieving highest sales growth of 193 per cent. …

LAHORE: Pakistan’s economy contracted by 1.5 per cent during CY2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic took its toll through the year, leading to net loss of over 715,000 jobs and pushing close to 2.5 million people into extreme poverty. A new study — Growth, Jobs, Welfare and Macro Policy in Pakistan 2020 — by the Lahore School of Economics has estimated …

ISLAMABAD: With the next general elections in mind, the PTI government will introduce an agriculture reform package worth Rs110 billion in the upcoming budget, besides increasing lending by almost 80 per cent to Rs2.7 trillion to substantially enhance crops’ output and farmers’ income within three years. Flanked by Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry, Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on …

Remittances by overseas Pakistani continued to surge, rising to an all-time high of $2.8 billion in April, 56 per cent higher than a year ago, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Tuesday. Cumulatively, during the July-April FY21 workers’ remittances rose to an unprecedented level of $24.2bn, up by 29pc, compared to the same period last year. These have …

QUETTA: Local joint venture company called the National Resources Private Limited (NRL) has presented a comprehensive proposal with all necessary documents to the Balo­chistan Mineral Exploration Company (BMEC) on unsolicited basis to develop the Tanjeel reserves first and then the vast Reko Diq copper-cum-gold reserves. Officials of the Mines and Mineral Development, Balochistan, confirmed on Sunday that BMEC — a …

Pakistan’s sovereignty ultimately depends on achieving financial freedom and self-reliance. We should not let near-term economic challenges cloud our long-term thinking and direction towards this goal. One key step towards achieving this goal is the creation of the Pakistan Sovereign Wealth Fund (PSWF). A sovereign wealth fund will provide Pakistan with a mechanism to preserve and grow the nation’s wealth. …

KARACHI: Adviser to Prime Minister on Comm­erce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood has said that Pakistan’s exports to China have increased by 31 per cent over the past nine months. In a series of tweets on Sunday, Mr Dawood shared details of the achievement. “The Second Phase of Pakistan-China FTA (FTA-II) became operational on 1st January 2020. MOC is glad …

ISLAMABAD: While blaming the Sindh’s higher losses and climate change conditions for recent dip in river flows, the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) on Sunday increased water supply to the province and asked the Pakistan Peoples Party leadership to refrain from politicising a technical matter. “As of today the share of Sindh, with immediate effect, has been increased from 66,000 …

Bitcoin rallied from a three-month low on Monday in a volatile session that saw investors initially selling and then buying cryptocurrencies in the wake of Tesla boss Elon Musk’s tweets about the carmaker’s bitcoin holdings. In his latest tweet, Musk said “Tesla has not sold any bitcoin”. That seeming clarification came after weekend tweets hinted that Tesla was considering or …