Business

ISLAMABAD: The legal arrangements for additional electricity and gas supplies to K-Electric from the national networks have been stalled owing to non-settlement of over Rs253 billion receivables of the National Transmission and Dispatch Company (NTDC) and the Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGCL). Informed sources said managements of both the public sector companies — NTDC and SSGCL — had declined to …

ISLAMABAD: A UK-based global aviation services specialist Menzies Aviation on Friday announced the acquisition of a 51 per cent shareholding in Royal Airport Services (RAS). An aviation services business based in Pakistan, RAS has been operating in the country since 2007 and has a strong position in local markets, a press release said. It has been providing a range of …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s exports grew for the third consecutive month in November to $2.161 billion, up 7.67 per cent from $2.007bn in the corresponding month last year, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed on Friday. The increase in exports is mainly driven by double-digit growth in proceeds from textile and non-textile commodities. Meanwhile, during the month under review, …

ISLAMABAD: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) on Thursday approved a ground-breaking initiative to enable all Pakistani resident and non-resident investors to open online accounts in the capital market. The new regime, part of the SECP’s digital transformation agenda, will allow investors to seamlessly open his or her account with a broker from anywhere in the country without …

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan was told on Thursday that development work on the ambitious multi-billion-rupee Ravi Urban Development Project (RUDP) has started and would be completed in phases. Presiding over a meeting on the RUDP and the Karachi islands project, the prime minister was pleased to know that the Frontier Works Organisation and the National Logistics Cell had started …

LONDON: The Organisation of the Petroleum Ex­­porting Countries (Opec) and Russia on Thursday agreed to a modest oil output increase from January by 500,000 barrels per day but failed to find a compromise on a broader and longer term policy for the rest of next year, four Opec+ sources told Reuters. The increase means Opec and Russia, a group known as …

ISLAMABAD: A hurriedly-called meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) on Thursday decided to provide an unspecified amount of subsidy arising out of abolition of peak electricity rates for industrial consumers already approved by the federal cabinet and the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra). The single point meeting called on the request of the Power Division surprised ECC members …

ISLAMABAD: In what appears to be a last resort, Pakistan Customs has linked curbing the menace of under-invoicing by the country’s importers to the inking of an Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Over the past few years UAE ports have emerged as a leading source of under-invoicing for Pakistani importers who declare their products …

KARACHI: The State Bank on Wednesday remo­ved the condition of filling the lengthy Form-E for small exporters in a bid to boost exports amid the Covid-19 pandemic and changing global consumer markets. The central bank issued a detail regulatory framework to facilitate Business-to-Consumer (B2C) e-Commerce exports from Pakistan. Under the new regulatory framework, the mandatory requirement of the ‘Export’ (E) …

RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has decided to add eight new narrow-body aircraft to its fleet on dry lease. The aircraft with seating capacity of 170-plus (all economy with soft divider after two rows) are expected to be delivered from January to December 2021. The PIA management has sought bids from different parties by January 11 next year for …