The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 sent inflationary shockwaves to nearly all oil-importing countries, including the US. The US responded by adopting a tight monetary policy regime manifesting in several rounds of interest rate hikes that weakened a basket of currencies against the dollar. With weaker local currencies and a rising oil import bill, emerging markets faced a double j
Textile exports for April clocked in at $1.24 billion, a staggering $500 million less than the previous year’s exports for April and a colossal $1bn per month short of the capability due to enhanced capacity. It is disheartening to see that over the same period, competing countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Vietnam posted impressive growth ranging from 10-30 per cent in textile exports
Stocks fell on Monday amid political polarisation and speculation that Staff Level Agreement (SLA) with International Monetary Fund (IMF) over a long-awaited bailout tranche may not materialise after all. The Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark KSE-100 index opened on a positive note but turned bearish within minutes and maintained a steady decline through the day, eventually shedding 404
More than two dozen smaller oil marketing companies (OMCs) claim to have suffered massive losses due to unfair petroleum pricing and marketing conditions and lashed out at the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) for its inability to ensure a coherent regulatory environment, causing existential crisis for them. “The entire industry, barring state-run Pakistan State Oil (PSO), is facing exist
In a significant economic setback, Pakistan’s textile and clothing industry experienced a substantial decline of 14.22 per cent year-on-year to $13.7 billion during the first 10 months of the current fiscal year. This downturn can primarily be attributed to a notable reduction in production, which was largely driven by the surging cost of production, data released by the Pakistan Bureau of Stat