Year: 2020

China has launched two satellites today morning using Long March-2D carrier rocket, namely Gaofen-9 05 and Tiantuo-5 which can keep an eye on BRI including the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) initiatives of Beijing. China has successfully launched a new satellite named Gaofen-9 05 using its Long March-2D carrier rocket at 10:27 hours on Sunday (Beijing Time), agencies reported. The launch took place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Northwest China, according to the China National Space Administration. The Gaofen-9 05 is an optical remote-sensing satellite with a resolution said to…

ISLAMABAD: The Cabinet Committee on Privatisation (CCoP) on Friday approved planned divestment of seven percent government-owned shares in Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) and 10 percent shares in Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL) through public offerings. The CCoP meeting presided over by Adviser to Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh also directed the Privatization Commission to initiate the process of hiring of Financial Adviser (FA) that the divestment process could be completed as early as possible. An official said the process of privatization remained stalled…

ISLAMABAD: In an interesting development, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has returned to the National Transmission & Despatch Company (NTDC) the 27-year Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP 2020-47) to get its approval from the government on the basis of preferred fuel mix and provincial shares. Strangely, the regulator also gave a list of about two dozen renewable plants with a capacity of about 1,600MW having relatively higher tariffs besides a couple of old thermal plants by name for inclusion in the revised plan and yet asked the NTDC to…

When one suffers from a grand calamity, a possible way of rationalizing subsequent travails is by resorting to a search for reason in the mire of seeming chaos. With the current pandemic though, and the continued mysteries that envelop Covid-19, it is quite challenging to understand what the central takeaway is shaping up to be. Nonetheless, one of the tangential lessons that Covid-19 has brought to the fore is from a centuries-old socio-economic phenomenon known as the tragedy of the commons. For centuries, the Grand Banks fishery off the coast…