Business

The Baluchistan government is set to present its budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year in the provincial assembly today. Finance Minister Mir Zah­o­or Ahmed Buledi will present the province’s budget. Sources said the total outlay of the budget is expected to be around Rs. 390 billion with Rs. 60 billion deficit.

Traders on Wall Street celebrated the news that the leaders of the United States and China will meet face-to-face next week to discuss their long-running trade dispute. As a result of the announcement, stocks on Wall Street rose sharply. President Donald Trump is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at an international summit in Japan.

The Government of Pakistan and the World Bank signed three loan agreements worth US$ 918 million to help support revenue mobilization and higher education development in the country on Tuesday. This includes US$400 million for the programme ‘Pakistan Raises Revenue Program’ which is aimed at contributing to a sustainable increase in domestic revenue by broadening the tax base and facilitating compliance.

The police on Monday finalised a security plan to provide foolproof security to polio teams during the anti-polio campaign in Lahore. As many as 1,400 policemen including 34 DSPs, 89 inspectors under the supervision of seven SPs would perform duty of protecting the polio workers. Motorcycles and vehicles of various police stations had also been deputed for patrolling during anti-polio campaign.

Governor, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Dr. Reza Baqar on Monday rejected the impression about International Monetary Fund (IMF) role in his appointment on this post. He said it was his desire to serve Pakistan after gaining experience working for the IMF. He explained that he was a citizen of Pakistan holding CNIC and passport of Pakistan before his appointment.

Qatar is expected to announce an investment of $22 billion in various sectors of Pakistan’s economy during the visit of Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani’s visit of Pakistan, on June 23. This comes as a second major investment in the country after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had announced to invest $21 billion in Pakistan earlier in February.

Samsung was warned owners of its latest television to perform regular virus checks in order to avoid malicious software attacks. The check itself may take some time as the official tutorial shows that it takes 12 individual button presses just to start it. Although since the tv comes with its own antivirus, the check may be a waste of time.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has said that international sales of Huawei phones have gone down by 40% due to the US blacklisting. The company will have to slash production by $30 billion in order to avoid losses. However, the company will survive this enormous setback and will still make $100 billion in sales.

Prime Minister Imran Khan's financial team is now facing the risk of debt default as foreign debts have hit an unsustainable peak. The team feels that this can be avoided by raising revenues, cutting spending, and observing financial discipline. In the past Pakistan has avoided defaults by getting debts written off and rescheduled.

Federal and provincial budgets have either been presented or will soon be presented. However the absence of a public finance management law, the fact that the constitution gives almost unlimited power to the executive to alter the budget after it has been passed, and that the finance bill is almost never brought up makes the whole process flawed.