ISLAMABAD: Claiming that the proposed federal budget 2024-25 practically cancelled the recently announced policy for setting up new and upgrading existing refineries, the oil industry has asked the government to revive the existing taxation regime, including continuing customs duty on diesel and sales tax laws on all petroleum products. In a representation to the federal ministers for finance and petroleum, the Oil Companies Advisory Council (OCAC)—an independent organisation formed by refineries, oil marketing companies, and a pipeline company—has conveyed the industry’s concerns over the next year’s budgetary measures. The OCAC said the withdrawal of the existing 10 per cent customs…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
KARACHI: As the outcome of the caretakers’ wheat import scandal is still pending, traders are now urging the government to allow export of wheat and its related products. Cereal Association of Pakistan (CAP) Chairman Muzammil Chappal claimed that the country has a surplus of 3.9 million tonnes of wheat, and the association has asked Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to allow its export immediately. He said the country has 36m tonnes of wheat stocks (31.4m tonnes of local production and 4.6m tonnes of carry forward stock), much higher than the annual consumption of 32m tonnes. Mr Chappal said wheat exports would…
KARACHI: The government’s borrowings in the first 11 months of the outgoing fiscal year have exceeded the combined figure of the two preceding fiscal years. This huge borrowing from banks was made when the interest rate was unprecedentedly high, at 22 per cent, indicating the size of debt servicing will enormously increase and exceed the budget estimates for the upcoming fiscal year. According to the SBP data, the government borrowed Rs7.39 trillion from July 2023 to June 7, 2024. There are still 23 days of borrowing to be reported. This was more than the government’s collective borrowings in FY23 and…
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s deadliest executioner died on Monday a year after he was released from prison where he hanged some of the country’s notorious serial killers, opposition politicians convicted of war crimes and coup plotters, police said. Since he was released from prison last June, Shahjahan Bouya, 70, wrote a top-selling book narrating his experiences as a hangman, briefly married a young girl 50 years younger than him, and in recent weeks took TikTok by storm with short clips with teenage girls. He felt chest pain on Monday morning at his home in Hemayetpur, an industrial town outside the capital Dhaka,…
TEHRAN: Iranians broadly deplore Western sanctions that have battered the economy, but the country’s six presidential candidates offer differing solutions — assuming the winner gets a say on foreign policy. Punishing US sanctions, reimposed following Washington’s withdrawal from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal, have brought years of economic hardships, fuelling political malaise and wide popular discontent. With the June 28 snap election fast approaching, debates between the candidates vying for Iran’s second-highest office have featured a key question: should Tehran mend ties with the West? Under the late president Ebrahim Raisi, who died last month in a helicopter crash, Western…
MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Monday directly blamed the United States for an attack on Crimea with US-supplied ATACMS missiles that killed at least four people and injured 151, and Moscow formally warned the US ambassador that retaliation would follow. The war in Ukraine has triggered the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and Russian officials have said that the conflict is entering the most dangerous escalatory phase to date. But directly blaming the United States for a deadly attack on Crimea — which Russia annexed in 2014 and now considers to be Russian…
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is due to plead guilty on Wednesday to violating US espionage law, in a deal that will set him free after a 14-year British legal odyssey and allow him to return home to Australia. Assange was released from prison on Monday and has left Britain, WikiLeaks said, as he reached a landmark plea deal with US authorities. “Julian Assange is free,” WikiLeaks wrote on X of its founder, who had been detained in Britain for five years as he fought extradition to the United States which sought to prosecute him for revealing military secrets. He has agreed to…
Writer Fatima Bhutto has made an appeal to Barnard College in light of the suspensions, expulsions and threats made to students for their participation in pro-Palestine protests on campus. The columnist and activist recalled her own time at Barnard in a video shared on Instagram, recounting how she and other students were able to partake in protests on campus without facing disciplinary actions for exercising their rights. Bhutto graduated from Barnard in 2004. She majored in Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. View this post on Instagram “When I was a student at Barnard the second Intifada had…
WASHINGTON: Tensions escalated outside a Torah synagogue in Los Angeles on Sunday following protests over an auction of property and land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to settlers. The event, organised by pro-Israel groups, drew strong condemnation and opposition from anti-war activists and protesters advocating for Palestinian rights. According to eyewitnesses and journalists covering the event, the protests turned violent when clashes broke out between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and pro-Israel groups. A social media site sympathetic to Palestinians, Gaza Notifications, reported, “A Torah synagogue in Los Angeles hosted a controversial auction on Sunday where property and land in the Israeli-occupied West…
WASHINGTON: The United States should welcome more students from China, but to study the humanities rather than sciences, the second-ranked US diplomat said on Monday, noting that US universities are limiting Chinese students’ access to sensitive technology given security concerns. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said not enough Americans were studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics. He said the US needed to recruit more international students for those fields, but from India, an increasingly important US security partner, and not China. For years, Chinese students have made up the largest foreign student body in the US and totalled nearly…
