Pakistani News for the Rest of Us

With these investments, Pakistan is also going to build Islamabad International Airport and two hydraulic power plants at Bunji and Nilam-Jhelum, Ghuman told local press recently. Pakistan has attracted US$1.6 billion in foreign investments during the first 7 months of this fiscal year, starting last July. It is expected to attract furthermore US$1.4 billion in …

Enshaa Holdings of Sharjah, UAE with its joint venture partner NLC of Pakistan, has planned to invest $200 million in Karachi where the NLC has bought 13,000 square yards of Pakistan Railways land in an open bid against the price of Rs2.3 billion. Shaikh Tariq Al Qassimi said: “The investment environment and rapid growth in …

According to locals, it also remains the cheapest compared to the newly introduced wireless phone services by PTCL and V Wireless. Most major cellphone companies of the country have yet to reach these remote areas. Advancement in telecommunications is beating the rate of infrastructure development in the Tharparkar district where wireless phone and the Internet …

Pakistan will soon replace its notes of all denominations with machine-readable currency to combat forgery and counterfeiting. Rs 20 notes had already been introduced in August last year with machine-readable technology. The ministry, through the State Bank of Pakistan, would ensure all currency notes were made with machine-readable security features this year. “The designs …

Pakistan became the second country after Brazil to be picked up for the coveted trophy following a stiff competition with other contenders, including India. The GSM Association, a global trade association representing more than 680 mobile operators, awarded Pakistan its prestigious Government Leadership Award-2006 on Monday. The congress was being attended by mobile industry CEOs …

Bank profits have risen sharply over the last three years. Fiscal 2004 saw record profits. Profits were up a massive 105 percent in nine months to September, 2005. The boost in the banks’ market capitalisation was 200 per cent. Banks, both foreign and domestic, are outperforming all financial sectors, as Pakistani economy moves on a …

Pakistan has often hit the headlines for gross gender violations like honour killings and gang rapes. But that is not the entire picture. NDTV met some women who are breaking the glass ceiling, pushing boundaries in the corporate sector in Pakistan. Musharraf Hai has been heading the multinational, Unilever Pakistan for more than four years …

Toyota Motor Corp will start local production and sales of its IMV global strategic vehicle in Pakistan as early as this year, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported, citing company President Katsuaki Watanabe. The business daily said Pakistan will be the 10th country in which the world’s second-largest automaker has set up a manufacturing base for …

Broadband Satellite Hub would provide low-cost and high reliability high speed satellite connectivity throughout the country, with a capacity of 18Mbps and several unique features the Hub will provide enterprise users in the country with true Broadband over satellite for the first time. Comstar ISA Ltd, the leading satellite service provider in Pakistan and …

Hundreds of Pakistani Britons are booking cheap plastic surgery in their ancestral homeland, three times the number just four years ago. Nose jobs, tummy tucks, liposuction and breast enlargements are the favoured treatments for many who feel “pressure to have Western features” but who want to pay only a fraction of what they would be …

Noreen is one of countless women in northern Pakistan whose lives were turned upside down by the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people and left 3 million homeless. Noor Ulain said she had always wanted to find a job when she finished studying, but her father had never agreed. But after the …

Karachi’s fast growing stock market has helped lift prospects for Pakistan’s largest mutual fund – National Investment Trust, which is slated for privatisation in March this year. The fortunes of the three banks are in contrast to 10 years ago, when NIT’s total assets were worth Rps9bn and the banks bought their stakes on the …

Standard & Poor’s revised its foreign currency credit rating on Pakistan to positive from stable on December 28, citing improvements in external debt indicators. The ratings agency affirmed its current ‘B+’ foreign currency and ‘BB’ local currency long-term and its ‘B’ short-term sovereign ratings assigned to Pakistan. “Sharp declines in the government’s external debt indicators …

Shamshad Akhtar, an Asian Development Bank official, was named the first woman to run Pakistan’s central bank. Akhtar has an M.S. in economics from Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, an M.A. in development economics from England’s University of Sussex and a Ph.D. in economics from Scotland’s Paisley College of Technology. She studied at Harvard University …