ISLAMABAD: The World Bank has committed up to $1.3 billion for Pakistan in the 2009/10 fiscal year and violence in the country will not deter it from continuing its projects, a World Bank official said. Out of new loans committed for this fiscal year, $300 million had been disbursed, Yusupha Crookes, World Bank country director for Pakistan, said in an interview.

KARACHI: The city on Saturday mourned the killings in the two blasts with shutter-down and wheel-jam strike bringing the supply of essential commodities and trade activities to complete halt. Production at the industrial units came down by about 15 percent due to absence of around 25 percent workforce, which could not turn up because of non-availability of transport.

LAHORE: Pakistan Water Front, working under the aegis of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), on Friday organised a presentation for the US consulate officials and sought their intervention to resolve water issue with India as it was using water as weapon. Former LCCI Vice President Shahzad Ali Malik gave the presentation.

LAHORE: The Indian Indus Water Commissioner, G Aranganathan is arriving in Lahore along with his delegation on Saturday (today) on a five-day visit in connection with an annual meeting of Pakistan-India Permanent Indus Water (PIIW) to discuss matters relating to the flow of water in rivers, exchange of data and early flood warning systems.

SINGAPORE: Pakistan is unlikely to enter another lending programme with the International Monetary Fund, but a final decision will be taken towards the end of the year, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin said on Thursday. Pakistan's current IMF programme ends in November, its economy is struggling and it is battling militants in the north-west.

ISLAMABAD: The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) has put on ice a controversial revised project of the Railways Ministry worth billions of rupees regarding procurement of 300 new design high-speed bogies until submission of comprehensive plan to the CDWP to upgrade the existing Railways system, well-informed sources told Business Recorder.

ISLAMABAD: The Revenue Advisory Council has strongly apprehended that a major breakdown of implementation of integrated value-added tax (VAT) would take place in case the Sindh government insisted to collect VAT on services from July 1, 2010. Sources told Business Recorder on Wednesday that Revenue Advisory Council in its last meeting discussed the Sindh government plan to collect VAT on services.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has decided to allocate specific budget for enforcement of value-added tax (VAT) and draft new rules/procedures/VAT invoices with totally revamped registration/refund mechanism under the 'VAT implementation action plan-2010'.

ISLAMABAD: The task force of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on broadening the tax base has identified 0.5 million rich people, who are not ready to come into the tax net. Sources told Business Recorder here on Tuesday that FBR and National and Database Registration Authority (Nadra) are jointly working on actual number of rich people earning huge income, but still out of the tax net.

ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court was informed here on Tuesday that Rs 256.66 billion loans to 6,69,819 borrowers were written off in the last 38 years (1971 to 2009) by public as well as private banks of the country. According to a summary submitted by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in the apex court, loans in the first category (up to Rs 0.5 million loans) totalling Rs 213.79 were written off to 23,445 borrowers in the last 38 years.

ISLAMABAD: Ministry of Finance has observed that the goals of increased revenue generation and targeted budgetary investment must be brought in line with the monetary policy objectives. The Fiscal Policy Statement (2009-10), issued by the Finance Ministry here on Monday, said that the pool of national savings must be enhanced, allowing for required investment to be made, without jeopardising the government's fiscal benchmarks.

KARACHI: A Monetary Policy Statement is widely perceived as a pre-emptive move by the central bank. It could either be quantitative or qualitative for easing or tightening purposes by effectively using cash reserve ratio (CRR), statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) and repo to sell securities or reverse repo to purchase securities. In recent times, it has been observed that the business community in Pakistan is more inclined towards MPS announcement than the fiscal announcements.

ISLAMABAD: The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (Ogra) on Sunday raised petroleum products' prices, with a substantial hike of Rs6.10 per litre in petrol price. According to a notification issued by Ogra here on late Sunday night, petrol price has been increased by Rs6.10 per litre, HOBC by Rs7.41, light diesel by Rs2.97 and the price of kerosene oil has been raised by Rs3.32 per litre.

ISLAMABAD: The Cabinet is reported to have refused to give clearance to the scandalous proposal of the Ministry of Water and Power to procure 30 million energy savers at double the market price, to be financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Agence Franchise de Development (AFD), sources in PPIB told Business Recorder.