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| July 21, 2008 | Monday | Rajab 17, 1429 |
Oil price: hype and reality
 EVER since the international oil prices started their journey to often set records almost daily basis, policy makers and oil business have accepted it as a God-sent opportunity....
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Towards bio-diesel
 AT a time when bio-fuels have suddenly become the new villains of the food crisis and being discouraged the world over, Pakistan is thinking in terms of using these as an alternate energy source....
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Prohibitive investment cost in Karachi
THE total foreign direct investment during 2006--07 was estimated at aro-und $8.4 billion. Of this total, Sindh got something like $2.32 billion or 27 per cent, the Sindh Industries Minister, Mr Rauf Siddi-qui estimated recently....
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Food security: an elusive goal
 THE official claim of achieving food security within a few years contradicts ground realities. The agriculture sector suffers from multiple crises. It regularly misses officially fixed yield and acreage targets, and the yield per acre is going down....
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Pesticide residues and global food trade
 PESTICIDES are not highly selective and are generally toxic to many non-target species such as birds, bees, fish, wildlife, domestic animals, livestock and humans. If not correctly used, pesticides can contaminate...
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Promoting household agriculture
THERE is no doubt the things have to undergo change in order to cater for the new price structure of commodities. A quick check of prices indicates that every price has doubled and consequently the labour wages have gone up....
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Investing in livestock and dairy sector
 The livestock provides essential items of food in the form of meat, milk and egg. Every farming house in the rural area has two to five animals....
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Telecom tariff in Saarc countries
 Saarc members have been talking of regional cooperation for a long time. Saarc itself is over 20 years old. There must be some real results-- something that citizens can feel....
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NWFP: power outages
THE skyrocketing prices of energy, the worst-ever power outages and the law and order situation may prove fatal to the fragile manufacturing sector of the Frontier Province....
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An expanding informal economy
We have more of an informal economy than a formal one as is indicated by a low tax-to-GDP ratio, the size of the non-documented business activities and the under-served sectors by the banking system....
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Labour mobility, capital flows and trade
THE developing Muslim nations need to ease the curbs on cross-broader movement of labour, for it works for all, home economy as well as recipient country of migrant workers....
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World Commodities
OIL: On July 11, in the London market, oil prices had risen to new record high of near $147 a barrel, spurred by growing worries of threats to suppliers from Iran and Nigeria and the possibility of a strike...
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Skills shortage and rising wages
 INDIA’S information technology (IT) sector, which has witnessed explosive growth in recent years, is confronting a nasty reality that threatens to upset its ambitious plans. The industry is increasingly facing a...
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Amnesty for tax defaulters
 In view of the critical economic situation, it was expected that the tax managers would focus on the under-taxed rich and the tax-evaded income and bring them into tax net....
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Restrictive trade practices
Cartels are illegal within countries as they behave like monopolies. That is, they restrict output and jack up prices. While their profit maximising output is also determined at the point where...
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International oil bubble: the way out
 Traditional economics lead us to believe that the soaring oil prices can be explained away by the law of demand and supply. The increasing demand is attributed to the growing consumption in the emerging economies like China and India....
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Lifting curbs on labour’s rights
 Federal labour minister Khursheed Shah says the government is working on the new draft of the Industrial Rela-tions Ordinance (IRO) 2008 to replace what he describes as the now suspended IRO 2002....
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Is recourse to IMF’s support unavoidable?
 Officials fear that a recourse to IMF’s balance of payments support programme is becoming unavoidable because of growing financial stress....
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Escalating economic woes
 Britain’s consumer price inflation shot up even faster than expected in the month of June, according to official data released last week. With jumps in the cost of food and petrol,the...
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Religious cohesion and divisive economics
 Religion does not help with economics. That this is the case was demonstrated in a vivid and tragic way by Pakistan in 1971. Economics proved to be a much more divisive force and overcame whatever cohesion religion could have provided....
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Emergency measures to check market slide
 SOME emergency measures taken by the KSE highups at the fag end of the last week halted the market decline but analysts were not sure whether the snap weekend rally could be extended to next week when the trading resumes....
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Stocks crash exerts pressure on rupee
 The deteriorating situation on both political and economic fronts forced the rupee to surrender its previous week’s gains against the dollar this week. Last week, timely intervention by the State Bank...
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Increase in cut-off yield on T-bills
 At the Treasury Bills auction on July 16, the State Bank of Pakistan sold Rs3.43 billon worth of 12 month T-bills and Rs49.18 billion of 3 month paper, after receiving total bids worth Rs54.4...
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Prices of all rice varieties fall
 SHARP fall in the prices of rice featured last week’s trading on the Karachi wholesale markets where some other essential items also came in for active selling and fell from the current higher levels....
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