KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Tuesday invited Omani investors to invest in different sectors, such as fisheries, water, construction and food processing. “The Sindh government is ready to work with them on a public-private partnership basis,” he told a 15-member delegation of the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OCCI). The delegation, led by OCCI chairperson Redha Juma Mohammad Ali Al-Saleh, discussed investment opportunities in Sindh for Omani investors. Details about investment opportunities in Oman for Pakistani investors were also shared on the occasion. The meeting was attended by Sindh Industries Minister Jam Ikramullah Dharejo, Special…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
KARACHI: The positive momentum on the Pakistan Stock Exchange continued for the second consecutive day on Tuesday on the back of a positive development relating to the resumption of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan programme. According to Topline Securities, investors welcomed the statement by Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin that a delay of two to four days in the approval of the Finance Supplementary Bill 2021 wouldn’t be an issue for the IMF programme. As a result, the KSE-100 index gained 503.95 points or 1.12 per cent on Tuesday to close at 45,390.84 points. Market participation increased 92.64pc to 375.98 million shares…
ISLAMABAD: The government on Tuesday finally laid the controversial finance supplementary bill, generally known as mini-budget, before the Senate amid opposition’s noisy protest as Chairman Sadiq Sanjrani referred the bill to the house committee concerned with the directive to finalise recommendations within three days. The opposition members stood up and raised anti-government slogans as soon as the chairman gave floor to Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin to lay a copy of the money bill, the Finance (Supplementary) Bill, 2021, which the government had already introduced in the National Assembly on December 30, with another controversial State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill,…
KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Tuesday restrained the provincial tax authorities from taking any coercive action against the state-run Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) and allowed it to clear the LNG consignment without demanding infrastructure cess. However, the two-judge bench led by Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi directed the PLL to furnish a bank guarantee equivalent to the differential amount to the nazir of SHC. The bench also issued notices to Sindh’s secretary of excise and taxation department, director general and other officials of the department in Sindh as well as the advocate general for Sindh for the next…
ISLAMABAD: Amid a strong backlash from the IT and telecom industry against the proposed increase in tax rates, the government is considering revisiting the measures proposed in the mini-budget. Not only the five telecom companies have expressed their concerns and disappointment over the move, but even Minister for IT and Telecom Syed Aminul Haq is opposed to the proposed measures. Sources in the ministry said the IT minister has conveyed the resentment of the stakeholders to Prime Minister Imran Khan. “The IT minister told the prime minister that an increase in tax on the telecom sector will have a negative…
The Taliban government in Afghanistan said on Tuesday that issues related to the fencing of Pak-Afghan border would be addressed through diplomatic channels, echoing an earlier statement by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Qureshi, during a press conference in Islamabad on Monday, had acknowledged that there were “some complications” pertaining to the fencing of Pak-Afghan border but added that the matter was being discussed with the Afghan Taliban government as he blamed “certain miscreants” for blowing such incidents out of proportion. Taking to Twitter, Taliban foreign ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said: “Recently, a few incidents have taken place along the Durand…
PHI LEH: Thailand has reopened Maya Bay, a white sand beach made famous by the 2000 film “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, more than three years after closing it to allow its ecosystem to recover from the impact of thousands of visitors each day. The beach, surrounded by 100-metre (328-ft) high cliffs, lies on the island of Phi Phi Leh in the Andaman Sea, and is only accessible by boats from nearby spots such as the islands of Phuket or Phi Phi, or mainland Krabi. Authorities shut the whole of Maya Bay to the public in 2018, saying coral reefs…
LONDON: Britain on Tuesday faced warnings of an impending hospital crisis due to staff shortages caused by a wave of Omicron infections, as the country’s daily Covid caseload breached 200,000 for the first time. The 24-hour tally, after chalking up multiple records in the run-up to New Year, hit 218,724 and another 48 deaths were reported in the latest government data. Hospital admissions have not hit anything like the peaks of previous waves of the pandemic and the number of people requiring ventilation has remained flat so far. But the state-run National Health Service (NHS) is struggling with staff forced…
NEW DELHI: Authorities in Delhi on Tuesday ordered people to stay home over coming weekends having seen Covid-19 cases quadruple in a week, with its chief minister saying he had caught the virus just a day after he addressed an election rally without a mask. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, the most senior elected official of the Indian capital’s administration, was one of the 37,379 new Covid-19 cases reported in India in the past 24 hours. Deaths in the past day totaled 124. The daily case load was the highest since early September and experts suspect the highly transmissible Omicron variant…
MONTREAL: A Canadian court has awarded more than $80 million in compensation to the families of six people who died when Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner almost two years ago, according to a decision made public on Monday. Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 was shot down shortly after take-off from Tehran on January 8, 2020, killing all 176 people aboard — including 85 Canadian citizens and permanent residents. Three days later, the Iranian armed forces admitted to downing the Keiv-bound plane “by mistake.” Ontario Superior Court Judge Edward Belobaba had previously ruled that the strike on the civilian aircraft “constituted terrorist…
