Day: May 27, 2021

Energy plays a vital role in the development of a country. A country’s progress is also estimated by its energy demand and consumption. At present Pakistan has an installed generation capacity of about 37,500MW. The minimum total demand is about 24,000MW whereas the maximum total demand in summers is enhanced to nearly 29,000MW. The country’s transmission and distribution capacity, however, is only approximately 22,000MW. This results in hours of electricity outrages in the hot summer months. Besides that, over 50 million people are not connected to the national grid and…

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Last week, in “CPEC: Understanding the Behemoth — Facts and Myth”, we covered the conceptual framework of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This week, we continue to discuss the ‘eight core areas’ of the agreed CPEC architecture. CPEC has strong focus on social development, population welfare and poverty alleviation along its command areas… unlike any other programme of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank etc. The first core area deals with the ‘integrated transportation system’, including construction/development of Kashghar-Islamabad, Peshawar-Islamabad-Karachi, Sukkur-Gwadar and Dera Ismail Khan-Quetta-Sorab-Gwadar road infrastructure. CPEC will…

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Fertiliser industry has urged the federal government to clear its pending refunds of Rs57 billion and provide relief to the sector in its upcoming budget by rationalising general sales tax (GST) for ease of doing business.https://1d9e23587209037635570b7739e57643.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html The industry also demanded for rationalising of input-output adjustment formula of the GST. Presently, fertiliser manufacturers are paying input at 5-17 percent of GST rate and collecting GST on output at 2 percent. This was resulting in approximately Rs7 to Rs8 billion annual unadjusted input sales tax for the sector. According to the budget…

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Economic recovery and a rebound in liquefied natural gas demand in the world’s largest LNG importing region, Asia, are set to keep spot regional LNG prices around current levels of $10 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) for most of the summer, which could be the highest price for this time of the year in seven years. Despite concerns about stalled short-term spot demand in India and Japan due to the COVID resurgence, Asia’s imports are holding up strong in May, according to vessel-tracking and port data from Refinitiv, cited…

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The unexpected coal-price revival has sparked a recovery in the share prices of Australian coal mining companies which have been able to find markets to replace China. Whitehaven Coal which had seen its share price on the Australian stock market weaken for much of the past 12-months has enjoyed a 25% share price rise over the past two weeks. Copper, a bellwether metal sometimes used as a measure of overall economic activity, has risen to $4.54 a pound after dropping to a low last week of $4.46/lb. The price recoveries,…

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