News

Govt weighs options to recover Rs447bn Gas Infrastructure Development Cess

The government on Monday decided to use all the administrative and legal resources to recover Rs447 billion Gas Infrastructure Development Cess (GIDC) from commercial and industrial entities which had blocked due payments through high courts despite standing orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan for recoveries. The decision was taken at a GIDC meeting presided over by Finance Minister Ishaq D

Troubles lurking around every corner

Pakistan will head into 2023 with an incredibly gloomy economic outlook and troubles lurking around every corner. In the outgoing year, the people came around to an unprecedented price growth amid the country’s consistently deteriorating balance of payments crisis exacerbated by devastating summer floods and ongoing political uncertainty. Next year we could see inflation entrenched further a

IMF negotiations

WITH the country’s foreign exchange reserves depleting to dangerous levels, all eyes are on the government to see how its negotiations with the IMF pan out. Friday’s pages carried a concerning report on the State Bank’s forex holdings, which stood at just $6.1bn after the week that ended Dec 16. The central bank cited continuing repayments of external debt as the reason behind the sustained dec

Dealing with recession

WHILE there is no single definition of recession, it is generally defined as a significant decline in economic activity that lasts for months or even years. Most experts declare a recession when a nation’s economy experiences negative GDP, rising levels of unemployment, falling retail sales, and contracting measures of income and manufacturing for an extended period of time. In Pakistan’s case,

Exports to Middle East fall with demand slowing in UAE

Pakistan’s exports to the Middle East dipped 5.57 per cent on a year-on-year basis to $951.78 million in the first five months of FY23 from $1.008bn mainly led by a substantial decline in exports to the United Arab Emirates. The exports to the region saw a mixed trend with an increase to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, while a decline to other countries of the region, according to data compile