Speakers at a stakeholder consultation session on utilising indigenous coal resources on Wednesday underlined the need for converting Thar coal into petrochemical products as well as natural gas. The session was organised to discuss the avenues to utilise Thar coal reserves to not only solve energy problems for Pakistan but also drive industrial growth by the Thar Coal Energy Board (TCEB). T
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