The Ukraine war continues to have an influence on the global economy, with the World Bank predicting that the war-torn country’s GDP will collapse by 45.1 percent in 2022. The Bank also issued a warning, predicting an even bleaker economic picture, considerably worse than the 10-35 percent drop predicted by the IMF last month. According … Read more
Official data released on Thursday indicated that Britain’s economy rebounded somewhat less than expected last year, pointing to a considerably tougher 2022 due to the consequences of the Ukraine crisis and increasing prices. The Office for National Statistics announced in a statement that GDP increased 7.4% in 2021, down from an early estimate of 7.5 … Read more
KARACHI: The frequent International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes complexes the policy making for the country, an official said on Monday. Federal Board of Revenue Chairman Muhammad Ashfaq, while addressing the members of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) said that Pakistan has entered into the IMF programmes several times resulting in complex policy … Read more
NAIROBI – The International Monetary Fund could stop its programme in Somalia in three months if long-postponed national elections encounter fresh delays, a senior official told AFP, as she began a mission to the troubled Horn of Africa nation on Tuesday. The IMF’s programme in Somalia is due for a review in mid-May, but election delays mean … Read more
KARACHI: A recent incident of an old pensioner’s maltreatment by the tax officials sent shockwaves among the people. Terming it a shameful act, they said, it caused embarrassment for the entire nation. Taking cognizance of the severity of the issue, President Dr Arif Ali apologised to the senior citizen, an 82-year-old Abdul Hamid Khan, who … Read more
KARACHI: The energy sector’s circular debt has ballooned to Rs2.47 trillion threatening to slash the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth potential despite a number of policy stimulus provided by the government. With the latest increase in the rates of petroleum products and the expected hike in the electricity tariff, the crippling power sector debt … Read more
KARACHI: Textiles, being one of the major components of the Pakistan economy, make up around 8.5 per cent of GDP and contribute around 60 per cent to the country’s total exports. However, the textile sector underperformed during the last few years, owing to the power shortages, high manufacturing costs and the lack of research and … Read more
ISLAMABAD: With the overall debt liabilities of $5.5 trillion, including the external debt of over $127 billion, Pakistan’s economy remains stuck in a vicious cycle. The government is being forced to borrow from every possible quarter just to meet the debt repayment liabilities and finance the budgetary gap. Experts believe that the government should revisit … Read more
ISLAMABAD: The government’s decision to rebase the economy from the fiscal year 2005-06 to 2015-16 has added Rs3.1 trillion in its value and jacked up last year’s GDP growth to 5.57 from 5.37 per cent. The change in the base-year was welcomed by stakeholders and experts, however, they said that it also exposed the structural … Read more
BEIJING: China will be able to achieve around 5.5 per cent GDP growth this year, and it has room for making macroeconomic policy adjustments to support the economy, experts said on Friday. Zhu Guangyao, former vice-minister of finance, told a news briefing in Beijing that the economy’s potential growth rate will likely be between 5 … Read more
WASHINGTON: After contracting in 2020, US economic growth saw its biggest increase since 1984 with a rebound to 5.7 per cent in 2021, the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government reported. But the hit from the Omicron variant of the virus held down the recovery in the final quarter of the year, when … Read more
SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft on Tuesday posted revenues of $51.7 billion, a 20 per cent increase on a year-on-year basis for the quarter ending December 31, 2021. The company’s quarterly net income was $18.8 billion, up by 21 per cent year-on-year. Its operating income was up 24 per cent to $22.2 billion. Revenues in productivity and … Read more
WASHINGTON: For most of last year, investors priced in a temporary rise in inflation in the United States given the unsteady economic recovery and a slow unravelling of supply bottlenecks. Now sentiment has shifted. Prices are rising at the fastest pace in almost four decades and the tight labor market has started to feed into … Read more
BEIJING: China’s GDP has expanded at 8.1 per cent in 2021, growing the fastest in nearly a decade and landing well above the government’s annual target of achieving a growth rate above 6 per cent. The robust expansion, which beats the market expectation and eclipses most of other major economies in two-year terms, spells out … Read more
LAHORE: Hearing a petition against borrowing loans exceeding 60 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), the Lahore High Court on Tuesday directed the federal government to provide details of the country’s internal and external debts. Justice Shahid Karim issued this order on a petition filed by advocate Munir Ahmed challenging the decision not to … Read more
WASHINGTON: In 2016, the discovery of two large, previously unreported loans sparked an economic crisis in Mozambique. Donor support to the country froze. The government was forced to make deep cuts in public spending. More recently, when Chad and Zambia asked to restructure their debt under the G-20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments, they ran … Read more
KARACHI: The Pakistan’s equity market gained 1.68 per cent during the week ended January 7, 2022, amid rising global commodity prices and likely release of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tranche, dealers said. The market outlook is guided by expected improvement on the external front through available financing from multilateral sources with the International Monetary … Read more
Gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the total output of goods and services in an economy, has flaws when used to gauge the well-being of a nation’s residents. For example, to the question of whether people in the United States are better-off in 2021 than they were before the Covid-19 pandemic, the answer would be … Read more
KARACHI: The proposed taxes on poultry products will undo all the efforts put in by the industry to reduce and eliminate malnutrition, a statement said on Wednesday. The Pakistan Poultry Association (PPA) patron-in-chief Kalil Sattar proposed a comprehensive plan to eliminate malnutrition, under-nourishment, stunting and wasting in children, it added. The World Food Programme estimates … Read more
TUNIS: Debt-ridden Tunisia unveiled a 2022 budget on Tuesday that will see it borrow almost $7 billion more, as it seeks to stimulate an economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic. The 2022 finance law boosts spending by over 3 per cent on a year-on-year basis to 57.3 billion dinars ($19.8 billion, 17.6 billion euros), Finance Minister … Read more
In 2020, we observed the largest one-year debt surge since World War II, with global debt rising to $226 trillion as the world was hit by a global health crisis and a deep recession. Debt was already elevated going into the crisis, but now governments must navigate a world of record-high public and private debt … Read more
Targeting 53,000 points by December 2022, Arsalan Soomro at KASB Securities project earnings growth of 12 per cent and a dividend yield of 6 per cent. Moreover, the index has the potential to re-rate once issues relating to the cash-starved energy chain are appeased. After considerable signs of economic overheating, the government and the central … Read more
TOKYO: Japan’s government on Friday unveiled its biggest ever full-year budget, including record defence spending to counter intensifying regional security threats. Cabinet ministers approved a draft national budget of a whopping 107.6 trillion yen ($940 billion) for the 2022/23 fiscal year, including 5.4 trillion yen for defence. Both figures have been increasing steadily for a decade … Read more
LAHORE: Urea industry’s role in Pakistan, being an agrarian state with 20 per cent GDP contribution and around 70 per cent of the total population depending on agriculture for its livelihood, has been pivotal. Prior to 1980/81, Pakistan imported over 50 per cent of its annual fertiliser requirements and had been a net importer till 2012. … Read more
BISHKEK: Kyrgyzstan is open to settling its differences with the Canadian investor that operated its giant Kumtor gold mine before the authorities took it over earlier this year, a top official said on Wednesday. Kyrgyzstan justified its May seizure of the mine, which accounted for 12.5 per cent of GDP in 2020, by citing company Centerra … Read more
RIYADH: Ratings agency Fitch has revised the financial outlook for Oman to stable from negative, as higher oil prices and fiscal reforms improve the balance-sheet of the Gulf state, Arab News reported. “The revision of the outlook reflects actual improvements in, and the expected evolution of, key fiscal metrics including government debt/GDP and the budget deficit,” Fitch … Read more
TOKYO: Japan’s parliament enacted a record supplementary budget worth over $300 billion on Monday as part of the measures to bolster the world’s third largest economy, as the pandemic threat drags on. The extra budget, larger than the total annual GDP of countries such as Colombia, Vietnam and Finland, will fund part of the massive virus … Read more
RIYADH: The Saudi capital is a global city, where a third of its residents are non-Saudis, and plans are afoot to transform Riyadh into one of the top-10 city economies of the world by 2030, Fahd Al-Rasheed said. The chief executive officer of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City highlighted the rapid transformation and ongoing … Read more
