Month: November 2020

U.S. energy firms this week added oil and natural gas rigs for an eighth week in a row for the first time since June 2018 as producers keep returning to the wellpad after crude prices held around $40 a barrel from mid June-late October. The oil and gas rig count, an early indicator of future output, rose four to 300 in the week to Nov. 6, the highest since May, energy services firm Baker Hughes Co said in its closely followed report on Friday. The total rig count fell to…

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JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia is planning to accept new mining license applications in December 2020, said Khalid S. Al-Mudaifer, vice minister for mining affairs and president of Saudi Geological Survey. He also said the new mineral data of the Kingdom will be publicly available in the coming months. Speaking at a Mines and Money 5@5 webinar titled “The regional geological survey program — the foundation for a new Saudi mining sector,” Al-Mudaifer said the Saudi mining sector has been earmarked for major investment — local and global — as part of the Saudi…

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Corporate profitability in the third quarter (July-September) was Rs210 billion, signifying a jump of 39 per cent from a year ago. It was the highest quarterly increase in corporate profits in any year. Quarter-on-quarter profitability also recorded stellar growth of 52pc. For the nine-month period (January-September), aggregate earnings of the companies that make up the KSE-100 index stood at Rs479bn, up 3.9pc from a year ago. “As the economy gradually transitioned into a recovery phase after the initial Covid-19 outbreak, earnings of companies that comprise KSE-100 index showed a record…

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KARACHI: Pakistan’s economy is now ready to take off. With the current account in surplus and the rupee appreciating, two things have become clear. First, imported inflation will now start receding. And second, the decline in the cost of external debt repayments will help the government to keep fiscal imbalance in check. That, in turn, will also reduce the need to borrow excessively from banks, creating room for higher lending by banks to the private sector. Low interest rates – along with central bank’s post-pandemic concessionary loaning schemes – will…

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