News

Falling short on Labour Day

Most Pakistanis just enjoy the May Day holiday with little care for its significance. The government is probably content with their labour-friendly legislation. The wide gaps in the implementation of these somehow escape their attention. Employers possibly resent it but tolerate it. Workers, however, celebrate Labour Day as well as they can. Today again, workers will meet at multiple platforms

Optimising remittances

The crisis of finance capital would have been much worse than what is being currently witnessed but for the crutches provided by workers’ remittances which accounted for $29 billion in 2022. The cyclic crises have become more frequent and generally occur every two to three years as in the case of Pakistan, instead of once in a decade universally observed not very long ago. Remittances somewh

State Life: the outlier in Pakistan’s insurance industry

How many people around you have ever willingly bought an insurance policy? It can’t be a lot, at least if you exclude the Sehat card that the citizens of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab are entitled to. That’s because Pakistan has one of the worst insurance penetration rates among regional or economic peers — at just 0.91 per cent (life and general insurance combined). It’s sort of ironic because

Oil drops as US rate hike concern, weak China data offset Opec+ cuts

Oil fell on Monday as concern over the economic impact of the US Federal Reserve potentially raising interest rates and weaker Chinese manufacturing data outweighed support from new Opec+ supply cuts taking effect this month. The Fed, which meets on May 2-3, is expected to increase interest rates by another 25 basis points. The US dollar rose against a basket of currencies on Monday, making oil

World Bank launches more robust, transparent business climate rankings

The World Bank on Monday unveiled a new methodology and improved safeguards for assessing the business climate in up to 180 countries after embarrassing revelations of data irregularities and favouritism toward China forced it to cancel its flagship rankings two years ago. The bank scrapped its “Doing Business” rankings in September 2021, citing internal audits and an independent probe that fou