Business

WASHINGTON: The global economy is in “less dire” shape than it was in June but risks crashing again if governments end fiscal and monetary support too soon, fail to control the coronavirus and ignore emerging market debt problems, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Tuesday. Georgieva told an online London School of Economics event that the IMF …

LAHORE: The provincial cabinet, which met here on Tuesday with Chief Minister Usman Buzdar in the chair, decided to import 300,000 tonnes of sugar through the Trading Corporation of Pakistan and told the food department to enter into an agreement with the TCP for purchasing the imported sweetner. The meeting also decided to amend the Sugar Factories Control Act (1950) …

ISLAMABAD: With the completion of quorum, the Oil & Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) is expected to settle — on priority and with majority vote — a dispute over system losses which has holding back the prices of Regasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) for two months now. The regulator has not notified RLNG prices after July owing to the disagreement between …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will ramp up spot buying of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the international market, seeking up to six cargoes for December, its procurement subsidiary said on its website, as the country prepares for a potentially crippling gas shortage. December and January see the largest spike in demand for gas in Pakistan, but this year the demand-supply shortfall will …

PESHAWAR: The federal government will invest up to Rs20 billion in Peshawar Electric Supply Company (Pesco) to ensure uninterrupted power supply to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, particularly the provincial capital and its suburbs. According to an official statement, under the proposed plan various projects including establishment of new grid stations, installation of new power transmission lines and bifurcation of feeders would be …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s trade deficit widened by 19.49 per cent to $2.391 billion in September, compared to $2.001bn during the same month last year, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) showed on Monday. The consistent decrease in imports during the last fiscal year and in the first two months of current fiscal year helped government manage external account …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided to file its opposition in the European Union in a reply to India’s claim of Geographical Indi­cation (GI) tag of Basmati rice. This was decided during a meeting chaired by Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce Razak Dawood. The meeting was attended by Secretary Commerce, Chairman, Intellectual Pro­perty Organisation (IPO-Pakistan), representatives of Rice Exporters Asso­ciation …

The revival of demand after the lockdown has brought back investors to the auto market along with the menace of “on money” or premium. Impatient buyers with excess cash in hand happily pay extra money to car dealers for instant delivery instead of waiting for months on end. Another factor that triggered the “on money” phenomenon was the curbs on …

ISLAMABAD: A virtual meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) plenary scheduled for Oct 21-23 will decide if Pakistan should be excluded from its ‘grey list’, based on a review of Islamabad’s performance to meet global commitments and standards on fight against money laundering and terror financing (ML&TF). The FATF plenary was earlier scheduled in June but Islamabad got …

The two-to-one majority Supreme Court judgment in August in the Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) case, which directed the government to recover the full amount of the unpaid cess of Rs457 billion owed by industrial consumers of natural gas in 24 instalments, was expected to resolve the issue that had dragged on in courts for almost a decade. Instead, it …