LONDON: Oil prices dropped on Monday on big spikes in Covid-19 infections over the weekend in the United States and elsewhere while traders await an OPEC technical meeting expected to recommend an easing of supply cuts. Brent crude fell 65 cents, or 1.5%, to $42.59 a barrel by 08.48 GMT, though prices have been hovering around $42 for a couple…
Read More
Singapore’s economy plunged into recession last quarter as an extended lockdown shuttered businesses and decimated retail spending, a sign of the pain the pandemic is wreaking across export-reliant Asian nations. Gross domestic product declined an annualized 41.2% from the previous three months, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement Tuesday, the biggest quarterly contraction on record and…
Read More
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a $10 billion investment in India on Monday at the Google for India virtual live-stream event. The event focused on contributing to accelerate India’s digital economy with this investment over the next five to seven years. “Today, I’m excited to announce the Google for India Digitization Fund. Through this effort, we will invest ₹75,000 crores,…
Read More
The federal government has proposed to give more administrative, financial and punitive powers to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Authority A draft prepared by the government in this regard also lays out the role of the prime minister in the authority’s affairs. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Dr Jehanzeb Khan on Monday held the first meeting of all government stakeholders to…
Read More
Russia has become the first nation to complete clinical trials of Covid-19 vaccine on humans, and the results have proven the medication’s effectiveness, the media reported on Sunday. Chief researcher Elena Smolyarchuk, who heads the Center for Clinical Research on Medications at Sechenov University, told Russian news agency TASS on Sunday that the human trials for the vaccine have been…
Read More
The lifting of the ban on construction and development works in Gwadar is welcome. This initiative of Gwadar Development Authority will promote construction activities in Gwadar which will not only speed up the work of construction industries but also support the small scale industries associated with it which will prove to be a source of economic growth. The current situation is that…
Read More
With Iran and China working on a multibillion-dollar 25-year economic and security deal, Israel has many reasons to be concerned and even alarmed.The proposed agreement, leaked to The New York Times, which reported on it on Saturday, would lead to a closer military relationship between Tehran and Beijing, including joint military exercises, research and weapons development and intelligence sharing. It…
Read More
ISLAMABAD: Raising objections over the long-term power plan, the Private Power & Infrastructure Board (PPIB) has advocated an end to LNG-based projects in future, proposing their replacement with hydropower and bulk induction of plants based on local coal with an additional Chinese investment. In its comments over the 27-year Integrated Generation Capacity Expansion Plan (IGCEP 2020-47), the PPIB has argued…
Read More
ISLAMABAD: In Pakistan, we have an entrenched cross-subsidy system, implemented through a cascaded tariff. It operates both in electricity and gas tariffs. There are on average five to six slabs in the residential tariff. Low consumption consumers pay a lower tariff and high energy consumers bear a higher tariff. For example, in case of electricity, the small consumer consuming 50-100…
Read More
ISLAMABAD: The political economy influences decision-making, which undermines the performance of economy and results in politicising of the economic priorities. Although all sectors of the economy are bearing the brunt of this situation, the energy sector has been impacted the most. The story of politicising the energy sector started after a World Bank report in the 1960s, which emphasised the…
Read More
