Drawing comfort from the Iran-Israel ceasefire and adhering to the two-week schedule for the budget debate, the National Assembly last week passed a relatively improved version of the proposed federal budget for 2025-26. While its core remained largely unchanged, subtle in form and far from ideal, it was nonetheless a step forward. The Finance Bill, set to become law upon presidential assent, i
Pakistan’s large-scale manufacturing (LSM) sector continued to face headwinds in first ten months of this fiscal year (July 2024–April 2025), contracting by 1.52 per cent year-on-year, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS). The decline reflects ongoing challenges in key industries such as food, chemicals, iron and steel. However, textile manufacturing — the largest component of L
India’s attempt to disrupt Pakistan’s external trade by banning ships carrying Pakistani goods from anchoring at its ports has failed to yield the desired impact, according to shipping industry representatives. On May 2, India imposed a ban on ships carrying goods originating from or destined for Pakistan, barring them from entering Indian ports or transiting through Indian territory. The move
Apparently, there seems to be more self-assertion by provinces in the country’s public policies, as indicated by record high annual development plans, while linking the provincial budget surpluses for fiscal consolidation to actual and not projected federal fiscal transfers. The existing centralised framework of fiscal federalism has been put under some pressure. The PML-N-ruled Punjab governme
“I’ve been bowled over by the response from users to the launch of Google Wallet in Pakistan,” said Chen Way Siew, Partnership Lead for Financial Institutions, Networks & Transit at Google. It was one of the top 10 downloaded apps on the Play Store in the first two weeks of its launch, he added in an email response. Since its launch in March, Google Wallet has been downloaded 552,733 times in P