Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has asked his ministers and advisers to forego their salaries, benefits and luxury cars and fly economy class as part of an austerity drive aimed at saving the government Rs200 billion a year. The belt-tightening comes as the government is trying to resume a stalled loan programme of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure funds worth $1 billion. The premie
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has begun an exercise to strengthen its statistics department by making it “go beyond traditional economic data”. Speaking at conference organised by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) on Wednesday, SBP Deputy Governor Sima Kamil said the central bank has set up a new division by the name of Avant-Garde Digit, which will bring innovation t
Amid looming shortages in Ramazan due to a host of reasons mainly restrictions on palm oil imports, the PMLN-led coalition government has directed provincial governments to provide monthly ghee and cooking oil consumption data and the number of mills in operations. The provincial administrations have also been instructed to share data on available stocks of edible oil and prices of different b
The United States and Pakistan will hold their first ministerial-level meeting on trade in Washington on Thursday which, Islamabad hopes, will gain greater access to the US market for its mangoes and software. US Trade Representative (USTR) “Ambassador Katherine Tai will host a meeting under the US-Pakistan Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with Pakistan’s Minister of Commerce Sy
Bulls made a comeback at the Pakistan Stock Exchange on Tuesday as share prices closed on the higher side thanks to positive triggers. Arif Habib Ltd said the index of representative shares hit an intraday high of 293.07 points as investors adopted a value-hunting-on-dips strategy. Their enthusiasm was based on the expectation of a positive outcome from the ongoing negotiations between the gove