Category: News & Announcement

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided to seek rollover of a $3 billion Chinese trade finance facility that it has actually used to repay maturing debt and is not in a financial position to return the money when the facility expires after six months. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has fully tapped the $3 billion or 20 billion Chinese yuan in the additional trade finance facility available under the China-Pakistan currency swap arrangement, showed financial accounts of the SBP for fiscal year 2019-20. Sources said Pakistan largely utilised the Chinese trade…

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Late last year, a cross-section of pundits predicted that 2020 would go down as one of the most volatile years in the history of financial markets mainly due to escalating trade wars. Turns out they were half-right. The current year really has been one of the most volatile on record not due to the feared trade tensions but a much deadlier foe: Covid-19. The global pandemic was directly responsible for the epic market crash back in March–the fastest in history–and it could be about to do the markets in, again.…

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In another sign that the second coronavirus wave is hitting fuel demand, oil trading firms are looking for new supertankers to use them as floating storage for diesel as demand is expected to suffer from the renewed lockdowns in major European economies, trade and shipping sources told Reuters. Diesel in global floating storage is expected to increase as major oil firms and trading houses are on the prowl for supertankers, expecting lower than usual diesel demand from the industrial, heating, and transport sector in the coming months. Concerns about fuel…

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Oil prices plummeted early on Wednesday, with Brent falling below $40 a barrel, dragged down by estimates of a surge in U.S. inventories and the surge in coronavirus cases in the United States and Europe. As of 9:44 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, before the EIA inventory report, WTI Crude was down by 5.66 percent at $37.33, and Brent Crude prices were dropping by 4.85 percent at $39.19, after the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported on Tuesday a bigger build than expected in crude oil inventories of 4.577 million barrels for…

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U.S. residential heating oil prices at the start of the winter heating season are 28 percent lower than in the previous heating season due to lower crude oil prices and high inventories of distillates in the United States, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said on Tuesday. The 28-percent drop in heating oil prices at the start of the winter season is the biggest price decrease between the start of two seasons since October 2015, according to EIA’s Heating Oil and Propane Update (HOPU). Distillate heating oil is the primary home…

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