Category: Business

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Monday directed the Ministry of National Food Security to take practical measures to arrest the current spike in food inflation. With a view to fixing the wheat procurement targets and financial requirements to this effect, the food ministry had convened a meeting of the Wheat […]

KARACHI: Profits of the Islamic banking industry increased by 48 per cent during the quarter Oct-Dec 2018, a report issued by the State Bank said on Monday. “Profit before tax of Islamic banking industry was recorded at Rs34 billion by end December, 2018 compared to Rs23bn in the same quarter last year,” according to SBP’s […]

The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) closed deep in the red on Monday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Shares Index shedding 600 points, down 1.6 per cent. The bearish trend dominated the market throughout the session as the benchmark index closed at 36,922 before hitting a day low at 36,738 points near the close of the day. […]

Finance Minister Asad Umar on Monday took a swipe at critics who accuse the government of having destabilised the economy with the weakening in the rupee-dollar exchange rate, saying the criticism was unfounded. “The exchange rate is not a measure of a strong economy. At one point, the Pakistani rupee was stronger than the Japanese […]

Pakistan’s economic growth, after reaching an 11-year high of 5.8 per cent in FY18, is expected to see a decline over the next two years, the World Bank has predicted. GDP growth will decelerate to 3.4pc in fiscal year 2018-19 and further drop to 2.7pc in FY20 as fiscal and monetary policies are tightened to […]

Pinterest, among a gaggle of tech companies planning to go public this year, hopes to raise as much as $1.5 billion in its initial offering of shares. The digital scrapbooking site said in a regulatory filing on Monday that it will put about 75 million shares up for sale at a price between $15 and […]

THE arrival of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission’s new chief for Pakistan Ernesto Ramirez Rigo in Islamabad on March 26 was preceded a day earlier by an official announcement of an inflow of $2.2 billion Chinese assistance for balance of payments support. As foreign exchange reserves rose to $17.58bn, Pakistani authorities said there was […]

As the panic-prone investors jettisoned their shares on April 4, sending the benchmark index down to the year’s lowest level (37,516 points), most marketmen whispered that the blame lay squarely on Finance Minister Asad Umar. Mr Umar had announced, in no uncertain terms, that the country had only two options: either go to the IMF […]

LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday conceded that concluding a Brexit deal with the main opposition will need “compromise on both sides” as she faced criticism for being inflexible. The embattled leader opened negotiations this week with the Labour Party in a bid to end months of political crisis over her divorce deal […]

ISLAMABAD: Minister for National Health Services (NHS) Aamer Mehmood Kiani has said that 226 medicines worth tens of millions of rupees, manufactured by 59 companies, have been confiscated by the government over the last few days. “These companies were selling medicines at prices higher than the maximum retail prices (MRPs) due to which the Drug […]