Month: January 2022

The newly elected President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry Irfan Iqbal Sheikh Tuesday urged the government and private sector to join hands for raising forest cover from 5 to 25 percent to meet the ever-growing needs of the furniture industry in the country. Talking to Mian Kashif Ashfaq, CEO of Pakistan Furniture Council (PFC) today Irfan Iqbal Sheikh said that currently, furniture and local industries were experiencing serious supply shocks, which were not only impeding their further growth, but also adversely affecting their international competitiveness.…

Read More

National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) approved a fuel charge adjustment (FCA) of Rs.1.0751 per kWh for K-Electric (KE) for the month of October 2021, a notification said on Tuesday. NEPRA notified the FCA for KE that had applied for the adjustment, after a hearing held on Nov 30, 2021. The authority approved the FCA of Rs. 1.0751/kWh for Oct 2021 having an impact of Rs1,910 million, to be recovered in the bills of January 2022 from KE consumers. Authority declared that the FCAs shall be applicable to all the…

Read More

Pak-Arab Refinery Limited (PARCO) has received Rs72,000 per tonne bid for export of its high sulfur fuel oil (HSFO) against the ex-refinery price of Rs86,000 per tonne, The News learnt on Tuesday. PARCO floated the tender for sale of its HSFO, which the company has started to store at Port Qasim for export purposes. It has stored 46,000 tonnes of HSFO at Port Qasim for export. Its stocks piled up because independent power producers (IPPs) were not buying the commodity for the last several weeks. “Company plans to store 50,000…

Read More

KARACHI: Both the Renewable & Alternative Energy Association of Pakistan (REAP) and the Pakistan Solar Association (PSA) have urged the federal government to immediately withdraw its proposal to impose 17 per cent GST on solar and wind power generation equipment as otherwise Pakistan’s continuing drive to ensure its energy security through clean power sources would be severely compromised. A press statement issued by the REAP quoted its Chairman, Muhammad Tariq Khattak, as saying that this highly controversial and ill-conceived proposal could set the nation on an accelerated energy poverty slide…

Read More

There are up to 85 locations across motorways, which are available for the development of DC-fast charging infrastructure for Electric Vehicles (EVs) to prevent ‘range-anxiety’ in adoption of modern electric cars in the country, a report identified. Titled ‘Developing Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Across Highways and Motorways of Pakistan’, the report was prepared to highlight the issues and potential being faced by the users in adoption of EVs by the LUMS’ energy institute in collaboration with the ministry of Climate Change and the National Center in Big Data and Cloud…

Read More

The most recent wake-up call for the Pakistani elite was last week’s mini budget. Nearly every aspect of this mini budget exposes a profound crisis at the heart of what is and what will be Pakistan for the over 110 million Pakistanis below the age of 23. Let’s count some of the more obvious crises to begin with. Shaukat Tarin, the finance minister was left dangling despite a six-month timeline afforded to the good folks that brought him into office in the first place, to convert his status to one…

Read More

Sui Southern Gas Company Ltd (SSGCL) has said that it is facing a shortfall of around 240-250 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of gas primarily because of depleting indigenous supplies and constant increase in demand. Clarifying a news report published in Dawn’s Jan 2 issue under the headline ‘Eight-hour gas supply hampering Karachi export industry’, the gas utility said that in January 2021 around 1,010mmcfd average gas was available for supply compared to 940 mmcfd in December 2021. A similar situation is likely to persist in the ongoing month…

Read More