Category: bussines

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stated on Monday that the government is strategically working to leverage the decline in global oil prices to alleviate economic challenges and drive national growth. “The recent drop in global oil prices offers a valuable opportunity, and we are working to harness its long-term benefits for Pakistan’s economy,” the PM said while chairing a meeting to review progress on the government’s wide-ranging reforms in the maritime sector. Oil slid around 3% on Monday to its weakest since 2021, while most commodity markets, including metals and coffee,…

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More than 50 nations have reached out to the White House to begin trade talks since US President Donald Trump rolled out sweeping new tariffs, top officials said on Sunday as they defended levies that wiped out nearly $6 trillion in value from US stocks last week and downplayed economic fallout. On Sunday morning talk shows, Trump’s top economic advisers sought to portray the tariffs as a savvy repositioning of the US in the global trade order. They also tried to minimise the economic fallout from last week’s tumultuous rollout,…

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The capital market faced a steep decline on Monday, with the benchmark KSE-100 Index plunging almost 3,900 points amid heightened global market turbulence and lingering uncertainty over key domestic policy matters. The Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX)’s benchmark index settled at 114,909.48 points, down by 3,882.18 points or -3.27%, from the previous close of 118,791.66. Earlier in the day, the KSE-100 had sunk to an intraday low of 110,103.97, reflecting a staggering drop of 8,687.69 points, or -7.31%. Even at its highest point of the session of 117,601.62, the index remained…

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Major stock indexes plunged in Asia on Monday as White House officials showed no sign of backing away from their sweeping tariff plans, and investors wagered the mounting risk of recession could see US interest rates cut as early as May. Futures markets moved swiftly to price in almost five quarter-point cuts in US rates this year, pulling Treasury yields down sharply and hampering the dollar. The carnage came as President Donald Trump told reporters that investors would have to take their medicine and he would not do a deal…

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The Trump administration’s method of calculating which countries should be hit with what reciprocal tariffs is “so crude and misleading”, say experts. In an over nine-minute-long video explainer released on April 4, foreign outlet ‘CBC News’ breaks down the methodology adopted by the US to hit countries with reciprocal tariffs. Douglas Irwin, professor of economics at Dartmouth College said, “I am surprised that they actually had a formula; it seemed like the tariffs were sort of random and plucked from air and it wasn’t clear what criteria one was going…

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The federal government has taken a significant step to reshape the crypto landscape by appointing Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao as a strategic adviser to the newly-formed Pakistan Crypto Council (PCC). The announcement was made during Zhao’s meeting with the PCC on Monday. The meeting was chaired by Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb and brought together key government stakeholders, including the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) chairman, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) governor, and the federal secretaries for Law and IT. During his visit, Zhao, who is one…

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WASHINGTON: The United States on Saturday began collecting President Donald Trump’s unilateral 10% tariff on all imports from many countries — with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week. The initial 10% “baseline” tariff took effect at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12:01am ET (0401 GMT), ushering in Trump’s full rejection of the post-World War Two system of mutually agreed tariff rates. “This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells…

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China announced additional tariffs of 34% on US goods on Friday, the most serious escalation in a trade war with President Donald Trump that has fed fears of a recession and triggered a global stock market rout. In the standoff between the world’s top two economies, Beijing also announced controls on exports of some rare earths and filed a complaint at the World Trade Organisation. It added 11 entities to the “unreliable entity” list, which allows Beijing to take punitive actions against foreign entities, including firms linked to arms sales…

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Pakistan’s capital market blasted to a record on Friday, drawing strength from the government’s power tariff relief plan, easing inflation, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan prospects before paring all the gains as investors locked in profits. The Pakistan Stock Exchange’s (PSX) benchmark KSE-100 Index surged to a fresh all-time intraday high of 120,796.67 — gaining as much as 1,858.56 points, or 1.56% — before succumbing to profit-taking. Eventually, the index closed in the red, snapping a multi-session winning streak. The KSE-100 Index shed 146.45 points, or 0.12%, to settle…

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