News

High cost of living

OVER the past few months, the rate at which the prices of goods and services in the country have risen has slowed significantly. Headline fell to a 44-month low of 6.9pc last month. This decline, driven by a high-base effect from last year when annual inflation stood at 31.4pc, along with plunging global oil and commodity prices, a stable exchange rate, falling demand due to eroding real wages,

Mixed developments

THE news is not all bad, though the outlook remains gloomy and will take at least a year to rectify. The stabilisation phase of economic management is drawing to a close. The government is making the right moves with plans for a debt buyback to retire a large amount of maturing Treasury bills, although one hopes this won’t simply be swapped with one debt instrument or another. The sheer size of

Holding the IMF to account

DESIGNED to be the international lender of last resort and help countries facing short-run balance-of-payments distress, the IMF has a rich history of being the quack physician that killed the patient. Driven by myopic market fundamentalism and riddled with policy missteps, its advice and actions have too often in the past proven to be detrimental to the long-run interests of its borrowers, whe

Govt hopes to earn $200m from meat exports to Malaysia

He made the announcement during a joint media conference with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif following their bilateral meeting, where both leaders discussed opportunities to enhance cooperation in key areas such as trade, investment, agriculture, tourism, education and defence. “As a result of our discussions, Malaysia has agreed in principle to import 100,000 tonnes of halal meat and basmati ri

Ferozsons partners with Gilead for HIV drugs

A local pharmaceutical company has reached an agreement with an American company for the manufacturing of HIV drugs. According to a notice issued to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) on Thursday, Ferozsons Labo­ratories Ltd (Ferozsons) has entered into a non-exclusive voluntary licence agreement with Gilead Sciences Ireland UC, a US-based biopharmaceutical company for the manufacture and sale o