Category: Business

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Auth­ority (PTA) on Tuesday floated the draft ‘Mobile Device Manufacturing Regulations and Authorisation’ to promote local manufacturing of handsets. The draft regulations — in line with the government’s Mobile Device Manufacturing (MDM) Policy launched on June 2 this year — aims to encourage domestic production of low, medium and high-end smartphones. […]

ISLAMABAD: The government on Tuesday lifted the ban on exports of Tyvek suits and antimalarial drugs including Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine. With the lifting of ban on Tyvek suits, exports of all Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) items are permitted. In a statement, the Ministry of Commerce said the decision was undertaken in the Cabinet meeting on […]

ISLAMABAD: Concerned over the poor performance of the power sector, the regulator has blamed the distribution companies (Discos) for overbilling consumers to cover up their inefficiencies and high system losses as the government struggles to put in place an improvement roadmap. In its “State of Industry Report 2019” cleared by the federal cabinet last week, […]

Prime Minister Imran Khan recently said that Pakistan’s economy was on the right track since country’s current account balance recorded a surplus $424 million in July 2020. Pakistan has gone through this boom and bust cycles many times before: an import-driven boom, balance of payments crisis, International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout, stabilisation, a period of growth and […]

Pakistani banks have two addictions: consumer deposits and government debt. They use the former to buy the latter, making easy dough with a few clicks on the Bloomberg terminal every month. No wonder the Islamic banking industry has long demanded — even to the exclusion of everything else — that they be invited to the […]

It was in the winter of 2016 that 40 per cent strategic shares in the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) were sold to a Chinese consortium comprising three exchanges — China Financial Futures Exchange Company Ltd (lead bidder), Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange — at Rs28 per share. They were sold a total of […]

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday invited investors to invest in the construction sector, particularly the Ravi Riverfront Urban Develop­ment Project of Lahore and Karachi’s Bundle Island Project. Presiding over a meeting of the National Coordination Committee on housing, construction and develop­ment, the prime minister said his government would provide maximum facilities to the […]

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has introduced an advance sales tax registration verification mechanism to minimise chances of bogus and paper-based companies. The FBR policy board — headed by its Chairman, Finance Adviser Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh — reviewed in detail the mechanism and other measures adopted so far to facilitate taxpayers. FBR […]

ISLAMABAD: The government on Thursday decided in principle to close down about 2,900 megawatts of government-owned old power plants in two phases and get rid of ‘must-run’ status of three LNG-based plants in Punjab of about 3,900MW. Under the decision, various units of about 1,400MW at four generation companies of ex-Wapda would be closed down […]

KARACHI: Auto sales shrank by 0.4 per cent year-on-year to 9,885 units in August thanks to a significant recovery in sales of Suzuki models during the month under review, data released by the Pakistan Automotive Manufacturers Association (Pama) showed on Thursday. Cumulative sales in the first two months of current fiscal year increased to 20,008 […]