Despite rising COVID-19 cases, Pakistan's industrial sector shows a recovering trend due to the Government's smart lockdown policy, according to a recent tweet on the State Bank of Pakistan's (SBP) official twitter page.

SBP reports that easing of lockdowns has resulted in growth in power generation and petroleum product sales during the first quarter of FY21.

Power generation witnessed a negative trend during the last three quarters of FY20, however power generation increased by almost 2% in 1Q FY21.

Similarly, sales of petroleum products also started improving due to the smart lockdown policy. Although petroleum product sales were falling during FY20, 1Q FY21 witnessed an increase in sales. The increasing trend was witnessed in 4Q FY20 when lockdown policy was eased.

Despite this increase in petroleum product sales, the prices of petroleum products witnessed a significant increase of up to 7.9 percent in the wake of an increase in global oil prices. According to the Finance Division the rates of various petroleum products increased with different ratios. The price of petrol has been increased to Rs103.69 per litre from Rs100.69 per litre, while the rate of HSD has been rose to Rs108.44 per litre from Rs105.44 per litre in the first half of the current month.