Category: Highlights

As the budget-making exercise is coming to a close, the government appears to be facing a tough challenge to finalize the budgetary targets. The IMF terms are a hard nut to crack, and the government is bound to consult the IMF, which is hinting at slapping additional taxes to the tune of Rs500 billion in the upcoming budget. The IMF is not keen on increasing salaries of government employees whereas the government is under tremendous pressure to give a much-needed raise to its staff which is facing the brunt of…

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The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to move up to 4.8% in the financial year 2021-22, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said Friday. Umar, going over the government’s progress in the current fiscal year during a press conference in Islamabad, said in the nine months of the current fiscal year, IT exports showed growth of 46%.https://6bb2a8965fcf7c36cb4f901b12757977.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html Umar said the country had “witnessed a strong growth” during the fiscal year, and it is expected that the remittances would shoot up from $21.7 billion to $29.1…

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National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has certified that performance of Karachi Electric (KE) and National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) improved in 2019-20 with respect to preceding year. Nepra, in its Performance Evaluation Report (PER) of KE 2019-20, said that system duration of interruption was witnessed on average around 0.12 hours (7 minutes) which shows a decrease of 80% as compared to preceding year’s average of 0.61 hours (37 minutes). Regarding system frequency of interruption, it was observed that average number of outages per circuit for KE remained 0.09,…

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:Balochistan government has planned to install solar energy system in various government departments including health, education, agriculture among others in the next financial year 2021-22. The installation of solar energy system in Primary healthcare centers in areas which were not connected to the national grid would be done in the next public sector development programme, an official of Balochistan government told APP on Thursday. The newly established Medical Emergency Response Centers (MERCs) at the highways of the province would also be connected with solar energy sources, he added. He said the project of installation of solar street lights in the main cities…

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Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) has successfully raised $500 million from the international markets at 7.5% on Thursday, completing a landmark deal not just for Pakistan’s power sector, but also the country’s first green bond issuance. Early details indicate the bond issue was also oversubscribed by over 4 times, attracting $2.2 billion, and bringing down the initial guidance level that suggested a rate close to 8%, according to officials familiar with the matter. The bond issuance is being seen as another positive development for the government that announced the…

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