Saudi Arabia announced on Sunday billions of dollars in investment deals between China and the Arab world, on the first day of the China-Arab business conference in Riyadh. The meeting comes amid growing commercial and diplomatic ties between Beijing and Middle Eastern countries, including a recent landmark Chinese-brokered rapprochement between powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia that has shifte
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) is organising an International Conference on Digitalisation of Taxes in Pakistan, in collaboration with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), in Islamabad on June 20. The three-day conference is being held in the context of an ESCAP technical assistance project to FBR, which focuses on four areas of informati
The coalition government has identified key risks to the next year’s budget and the medium-term macroeconomic outlook, including the current financial and operational performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), rising public debt, movement of interest and exchange rates by the State Bank of Pakistan, and climate change. In an integrity statement submitted to parliament required under the Pub
‘No new taxes’ in the FY24 budget, a headline on the website of this newspaper said after the presentation of the budget on June 9. Petrol and petroleum products were no exception. Despite the ballooning fiscal deficit, no new levies were imposed on them. Budget makers were under pressure. They were obligated to follow the instructions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fund has be
Pakistan’s banking sector is like a rich patriarch who’s expected to bail out distant relatives falling on hard times every now and then. Yet everyone resents the same patriarch for his high status and vast wealth that they believe is undeserved and acquired through dubious means. A glance at recent federal budgets, including 2023-24, shows the government is quick to pile too much tax on the ba