The stock market on Monday continued its losing streak for the sixth straight day ahead of the monetary policy announcement later in the evening and persisting gloomy investor sentiments associated with challenging budgetary proposals in line with IMF conditions to secure another bailout. Ahsan Mehanti of Arif Habib Corporation said stocks closed under pressure amid pre-budget uncertainty and c
Wholesale and retail trade is one segment that barely pays any direct taxes and often creates the most noise whenever there is any effort to extract even a minimal amount of tax. Ammar H Khan Published June 11, 2024 Updated about 4 hours ago Listen to article Wholesale and retail trade make up 18.1 per cent of Pakistan’s Gross Domestic Product while contributing only 2pc in direct taxes. On t
CITING a better-than-anticipated decline in May’s inflation figures, the State Bank ceded to rate cut demands on Monday, by slashing its policy rate by 150bps to 20.5pc, after having held it steady at a record 22pc for nearly a year. The bank also mentioned the uptick in economic activity, and improvements in the external sector outlook and international reserves, resulting from a lower current
GIVEN the current economic crisis, all analysts and pundits expect a contractionary budget. The question does not appear to be whether taxes will be increased; but rather, to what extent and for which sectors. In March, Pakistan’s large-scale manufacturing industries decreased by 9.35 per cent, a third consecutive month of declines. Recent years of pandemic, floods, political instability at
The policy rate cut of 150 basis points by the State Bank on Monday disappointed most of the industrialists as they expected that a much bigger cut would bring the interest rate down to 15 per cent. Atif Ikram Sheikh, the FPCCI president, said the interest rate should come down to 15 per cent to enable Pakistani exporters to compete in the regional and international export markets by reducing t