KARACHI: Pakistan’s Rs18.77 trillion federal budget for the fiscal year beginning in July won a qualified endorsement from Fitch Ratings on Tuesday, with the agency crediting Islamabad’s sustained commitment to fiscal discipline under its $7 billion International Monetary Fund program while warning that the country’s most ambitious revenue targets yet remain vulnerable to the same structural weaknesses that have long plagued its tax administration.
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Four independent winners’ move to IPP disrupts Bhutto’s arithmetic in Gilgit-Baltistan
Gilgit: Four independent candidates who won seats in Gilgit-Baltistan’s general elections have joined the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Party, handing the fledgling political outfit its first-ever foothold in the regional assembly and potentially complicating what had appeared to be a straightforward path to government for the Pakistan Peoples Party.
Pakistan sees budget upside from US-Iran deal but warns supply chains need time to heal
KARACHI: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said the country’s economic outlook has improved following the US-Iran framework agreement, but cautioned that budget projections would not be revised until the full scope of supply-chain damage from the conflict becomes clear.
Back to the table in Geneva — after a war that ended where it began
There is a scene that keeps returning, unbidden. It is the morning of 26 February, and in Geneva, Iranian and American negotiators are sitting across a table from one another, putting concessions and demands on paper. The Strait of Hormuz is open. Ships are moving. The nuclear question is live but contained. Multiple sources who were present have confirmed that those talks were, by the cautious standards of diplomacy, going somewhere. Forty-eight hours later, the bombs began to fall.
PCB overhauls player contracts in bid to revive test fortunes
LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board unveiled a sweeping overhaul of its central contract system on Monday, restructuring the financial framework that governs the country’s professional cricketers into five distinct categories while granting dedicated Test specialists the rare freedom to play first-class cricket abroad — a concession that represents, in the board’s own framing, a deliberate wager on the long-term health of the longest format.
Pakistan sees economic upside from US-Iran peace deal, but energy recovery will take time
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s finance minister said the US-Iran peace agreement announced on Monday will deliver meaningful economic benefits in the coming fiscal year, even as experts cautioned that disruptions to global energy markets caused by months of conflict will take considerably longer to unwind.
Pakistan braces for a punishing summer as forecasters warn of heat, drought, and floods
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is heading into what government meteorologists describe as a difficult and potentially dangerous summer, with an official three-month forecast projecting below-normal rainfall and higher-than-normal temperatures across much of the country from July through September — a combination that threatens crops, strains water supplies, and raises the specter of flash floods, heat emergencies, and disease outbreaks all at once.
SBP keeps policy rate steady as US-Iran conflict fades but price pressures persist
KARACHI: Pakistan’s central bank held its benchmark interest rate steady at 11.5% on Monday, resisting pressure from industry to ease monetary conditions even as the Gulf conflict that drove its last rate increase shows signs of waning.
Pakistan takes a bow as US-Iran accord draws global praise
ISLAMABAD: The flags at the United Nations were barely dry on the announcement when the congratulations began flooding in — from Wellington and Tokyo, from Ottawa and Berlin, from Riyadh and Rome. By Monday evening, it was clear that the preliminary agreement between Washington and Tehran to end more than three months of war had touched something in the international community that even the most seasoned diplomats had not dared expect: genuine relief.
Pakistan brokered the deal that ended the US-Iran war; Geneva ceremony set for Friday
ISLAMABAD: Standing before the National Assembly on Monday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif offered what amounted to an unusually candid accounting of how close the world had come, again and again, to watching the fragile peace between the United States and Iran slip away entirely.