The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and other commercial banks on Saturday finally withdrew their appeals from the Supreme Court, challenging the Federal Shariat Court’s (FSC) directions to the government to make the country’s entire banking system completely Sharia-compliant by Dec 2027. The appeals were taken back in line with a Nov 9 announcement by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar that SBP and the N
The schedule for talks between Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been readjusted but the negotiations are continuing, official sources in Washington say. Media reports, however, claim that the talks that were scheduled to begin last week have been postponed till the third week of November. According to these reports, the talks would resume after Pakistan fulfilled its pl
The central banks of Pakistan and China have renewed their commitment to expanding their bilateral trade and investment in the Chinese yuan. For that purpose, they signed a memorandum of understanding on establishing yuan clearing arrangements during a recent visit of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to China. According to a senior banker, Yuan clearance enables Pakistan to access Chinese banks an
Pakistan and China are planning to arrange bidding for $10 billion Mainline-1 — the 1,872km Railway Track along with associated facilities from Karachi to Peshawar — next month (December) and have agreed to have its foreign exchange component of $8.4bn fully financed through Renminbi (RMB) based Chinese loan. The bidding would be among the leading Chinese companies to be identified and recommen
Would you believe that out of every 100 rupees the federal government spends each year, Rs52 goes on debt servicing? Sadly, this is true. During July-September 2022, the current expenses of the federal government totalled Rs1.832 trillion. Of this, Rs954 billion was used for domestic and foreign debt servicing, according to the quarterly fiscal review. Domestic debt servicing alone consumed Rs8