An emergent meeting of the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet on Tuesday approved a special grant of Rs27 billion (about $100 million) for payments to Kuwait Petroleum Corporation to avoid a formal default of the national fuel supplier — Pakistan State Oil (PSO). The meeting presided over by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar also sanctioned Rs2.9bn in additional supplementary grant a
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) was not consulted on the government’s recent move to announce a fuel subsidy, the lender’s key official in Islamabad has said, adding that it was seeking “greater details” on the scheme, Bloomberg reported. The statement from Esther Perez Ruiz, the IMF’s resident representative for Pakistan, came two days after the government unveiled a Rs50 subsidy on each
Stock prices slightly went up as trading began on Monday before bears took over the exchange on the negative news flow. Arif Habib Ltd said the benchmark of representative shares of the Pakistan Stock Exchange lost steam because of continuous economic and political uncertainties. Negative triggers plunged the index to an intra-day low of 420.71 points. Investors chose to be cautious while
AVERTING sovereign default is important, so let’s assume we manage to do it. A more relevant question is why is Pakistan facing default? Looking at the seven years from FY16 to FY22, Pakistan’s cumulative current account deficit was $74.5 billion, while the State Bank’s forex reserves fell by $3.6bn during this period. This means Pakistan needed financing of $70.9bn, and borrowed $65bn. Foreign
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said on Monday that his comments in the Senate on Pakistan’s nuclear programme were being “quoted out of context”, adding that the delay in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme was due to “technical reasons”. Last week, Dar told the upper house of Parliament that there would be “no compromise” on the country’s nuclear and missile programme. The remarks h