Category: Highlights

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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A recent article from Mongabay reports that as of 2023 Indonesia will no longer build new coal-fired power plants. The article notes, however, that Indonesia still intends to finish dozens of projects that are currently under construction, and that these will continue burning coal and emitting carbon for many years to come. Nevertheless, if Indonesia is serious about quitting coal it would be a welcome development, as the country accounted for 2 percent of global emissions in 2020 and the economy is likely to continue growing rapidly for the foreseeable…

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Strong Asian LNG demand for summer and tight supply amid maintenance and outages at multiple terminals have helped the market absorb the spot LNG cargoes rejected by India due to its COVID-19 related lockdowns, according to traders and market participants. This has muted the market impact of the diversions and enabled Indian gas importers and their suppliers to find alternate destinations for contracted LNG volumes without any force majeure notices being issued or triggering any major disputes, they said.In contrast, during India’s first nationwide coronavirus lockdown in late March 2020,…

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