Month: July 2022

Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal said Sunday that the price of gas has gone up in the international market, however, Qatar offered low-price gas to Pakistan during the recent visit of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa, ARY News reported. Ahsan Iqbal gave a new logic to the menace of loadshedding, saying that the unusually hot weather was the cause of power outages as the demand for electricity went up. He said that the prime minister summoned a session to discuss a strategy to…

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Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are making an all-out effort to evolve a consensus on prior actions for moving towards a staff-level agreement and one of the bones of contention is related to the strengthening of anti-corruption institutional mechanism.https://025ed454977d402ac5b76239e65af7a7.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html The IMF wants to make it a part of the prior actions list because the government could not fulfil the Structural Benchmark (SB) agreed by the PTI-led regime on the completion of the 6th review. Now the IMF is vying for converting it into a fresh prior action for…

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All Pakistani commercial banks have refused to open letters of credit (LCs) for Russian-origin crude oil in the presence of economic sanctions by the US, the UK and EU countries against Moscow for war against Ukraine, saying the payment in US dollar terms is not possible against the import of Russian crude oil. However, if the government manages to enter a G2G agreement with Russia for the import of crude oil under transaction mode based on the rouble, ensuring no impact of sanctions on Pakistan, the refineries can utilise crude…

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The government is working on a comprehensive solar energy package comprising tax waivers and concessionary loans for consumers in a bid to overcome the prolonged power outages that have stalled life in the country. The solar package will also include a short-term plan for shifting government offices on to solar energy. It involves preparation of a plan for helping small consumers to switch over to solar energy with the help of subsidy or concessionary loans. The government is planning to waive general sales tax on all the components used in…

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