Asia

KARACHI: While showing no mercy for the inflation-hit consumers, the millers have further jacked up per kg prices by Rs7 in flour no.2.5 and Rs10 in fine and super fine flour (maida). The new rate of flour no.2.5 has been fixed at Rs106 per kg while fine and super fine flour rates are now Rs114 per kg, a miller said, adding that the new rate of 10kg flour bag has been increased to Rs1,065 from Rs995. Karachi Wholesalers Grocers Group (KWGA) Rauf Ibrahim said the wheat rate in the open market has swelled to Rs9,200 per 100 kg bag from Rs8,500 two days back. He said the arrival of wheat in Karachi from interior Sindh has been confined to only 6,600 tonnes a day from 10,000-12,000 tonnes owing to flash floods that have destroyed road network as well as wheat stocks. Super fine va...

Beijing, China:   The recent warning by Bangladesh finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal or a recent cancellation of a key Chinese-financed project by Zambia are sharp pointers, an America-based publication reported. Zambia, working to prevent China’s debt-diplomacy, recently cancelled USD 1.6 billion Chinese loans. The Bangladesh finance minister had warned the developing countries that they “must think twice” about taking more loans through BRI as global inflation and slowing growth added to the strains on indebted emerging markets. In an interview with Financial Times, Kamal also said China needed to be “more rigorous in evaluating its loans amid concerns that poor lending decisions risked pushing countries into debt distress.” The deep economic stress Pakistan is curr...

The move of European Union banning products by forced labour was prompted by pressure from EU lawmakers who raised profound concerns over systematic human rights violations and their widespread effect on individuals and minorities in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. "Such prohibition should apply to products for which forced labour has been used at any stage of their production, manufacture, harvest and extraction, including working or processing related to the products," the document said. However, the European Commission's draft rules are less far-reaching than what EU lawmakers have proposed due in part to legal constraints. The EU executive will need to discuss details with them and EU countries before the rules become law, reported Business Recorder. "The prohibiti...

China became an economic giant of the world thanks to an extraordinary transition in the last four decades, but it is only now there is new light on the price it has had to pay for its success. In 2018, China celebrated the 40th anniversary of transition from a planned economy to a market economy. And it was an astounding success. In 1978, the country was a closed suspended to the world. It was a poor country, if not among the world’s poorest. Its per capita was less than a third of even sub-Saharan African nations. Over 80 per cent of its people lived in the rural areas, as many were living below the international poverty line and China had a closed economy where trade made less than 10 per cent of its GDP. The reasons for Chihna’s success and the cost of the stupendous growth are ...

China’s private-sector enterprises increased their R&D expenditures last year despite muted growth amid a souring economy and geopolitical headwinds, according to the latest Top 500 China Private Enterprise ranking. Although Huawei Technologies remained the country’s largest private-sector R&D spender, with a budget of 142.7 billion yuan (US$20.5 billion), it lost the No. 1 spot in revenue terms after a six-year reign amid US trade sanctions and a depressed market due to a lack of consumer appetite for always upgrading to the latest smartphone. E-commerce giant JD.com topped the list for the first time with 951.6 billion yuan in revenue, followed by this newspaper’s owner Alibaba Group Holding, and textile maker Hengli Group. “The overall size of the Chinese top 500 priva...

New Delhi, India:  Welcoming Georgieva to Rashtrapati Bhavan, President Murmu said that the world is passing through the third year of the Covid pandemic. She noted that multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have provided significant assistance to many low-income countries.Moreover, she said that IMF has to play an important role in maintaining the stability of the International Monetary System. The President stated that India is one of the fastest growing major economies in the world, read a press release by the President’s office.India’s start-up ecosystem ranks high in the world. The success of start-ups in our country, especially the growing number of Unicorns, is a shining example of our industrial progress. What is even more ...

ISLAMABAD: “In early 2022, new investments through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), originally established in 2013, were announced. Although infrastructure in these second-phase investments could raise growth prospects, attendant contingent liabilities also pose a risk to debt sustainability,” the IMF stated in its Public and External Debt Sustainability Analysis done alone with the Fund staff report released after the approval of EFF program for Pakistan. The report states that Pakistan’s public debt continues to be judged as sustainable with strong policies and robust growth, but with greater uncertainty, in part because the fiscal relaxation in FY22H2 prevented the debt ratio reduction projected at the time of the sixth review. The debt-to-GDP ratio is now projected t...

No one in the financial sector is feeling the pinch more than the small lenders, which account for about a quarter of the country’s total banking assets. This could spell trouble for millions of individual savers, analysts warned. Some 20 per cent of the 45 regional and rural banks listed on stock exchanges suffered a plunge in profits in the first half of 2022, while some saw their non-performing loan ratios deteriorate. It was the poorest half-year performance in years. The wounds of non-listed small lenders – 128 city commercial banks, 1,596 rural commercial banks and 1,651 village and township banks, to be precise – could be even deeper, a worrying prospect that prompted the banking regulator to promise speedy action. Two rural banks, Liaoyang Rural Commercial Bank and Liaoni...

About one in every three cigarettes smoked in the world is smoked in China. The Chinese have an extensive and relatively historical culture of smoking where 52% of adult male are smokers, about two-third of them starting even before they turn 20. It is an intrinsic part of their socio-cultural fabric, where gifting of cigarettes to friends and even strangers is considered polite. Given this, it comes without surprise that the most commonly diagnosed cancer in China is lung cancer, becoming the leading cause of cancer mortality in the country. It was still not a problem if the world could dismiss China’s extensive culture of tobacco consumption as its internal matter. Unfortunately, like all things Chinese, it is not that simple anymore. The Chinese government and tobacco conglomerates ...

The double digit growth story of China in the 1990s that transformed it into the “manufacturing hub” of the world was inherently contradictory to the principles of sustainable development, especially with regard to energy intensity as well as energy mix. China ended up in the two decades of its breakneck growth as the largest polluter of the world releasing over 10065 million tons Carbon (CO2). It contributes more than 30% of the total global carbon emissions as compared to 15% of the US, 7% of India, 5% of Russia and 4% of Japan. China’s energy intensity and carbon intensity is among the highest in the world, indicating higher use of energy and carbon emission to raise GDP by one unit. This in turn has made China one of the most climatically vulnerable places with increasing frequency...