Saturday, 22 September, 2012

ISLAMABAD

APP

THREE Trade agreementswere signed between theSecretary Commerce Pak-istan Munir Qureshi andSecretary Commerce India

S.R.Rao.The agreements were signed at the

end of 7th Round of Pakistan-IndianCommerce Secretary level Talks on“Economic & Commercial Co-operationSeptember 20-21, here on Friday.

The agreements signed included Re-dressal of trade Grievances and Agree-ment between Government of IslamicRepublic of Pakistan and government ofRepublic of India on co-operation andmutual assistance in custom matters.

Besides, Bilateral Cooperationagreement between Pakistan standard ofquality control authority, Ministry ofScience & Technology and the BureauIndian Standards Ministry of ConsumerAffairs, Food and Public Distributionwas also singed.

Spain needs no

sovereign bailout:

German minister

German Finance Minister

Wolfgang Schaeuble said

on Friday that Spain did

not need a sovereign

bailout on top of the

package already agreed for

its banks because it was

on the right path to regain

the confidence of markets.

BERLIN: “Spain needs no programbecause it is doing the right thing andwill be successful,” he told foreign cor-respondents in Berlin. “What Spainneeds is the confidence of financialmarkets and that is where Spain hasreal problems.” Schaeuble dismissed as“dangerous” the idea of giving Spainthe full 100 billion euros earmarked forthe recapitalization of its banks if itneeds less than that amount. Regard-ing Greece, the minister said nobody inthe euro zone wanted it to leave thecurrency bloc but Athens had to proveto the “troika” of international inspec-tors that it was sticking to the terms ofits second international rescue pack-age. Stressing that it had been “verydifficult” to convince European leadersto give Greece another bailout, Schaeu-ble said: “Nobody wants Greece toleave the euro, but the question iswhether it has met the conditions of itssecond aid program.” AGENCIES

3 Indo-Pak trade agreements inked

Troika report on Greece may come after US vote

NEW YORK

AGENCIES

The report by the ‘troika’ of Greece’s foreignlenders — the European Commission, Euro-pean Central Bank and International Mon-etary Fund — was expected during October,possibly before a meeting of euro zone fi-nance ministers on October 8.

The study provides the basis for deci-sions on whether to disburse the nexttranche of aid to Athens, which may other-wise run out of money to pay wages andpensions, default on its debt and perhaps beforced to leave the euro area.

Differences inside the troika about theprecise extent of Greece’s debt problems,combined with political pressure to hold offfor another few weeks, look likely to mean adelay until mid-November. In the mean-time, Greece will be kept afloat by issuingshort-term treasury bills and its banks willget access to emergency funds from theGreek central bank. “The Obama adminis-tration doesn’t want anything on a macro-economic scale that is going to rock theglobal economy before November 6,” a sen-ior EU official told Reuters, adding that pre-vious troika reports had also slipped.

The European Commission’s represen-tative on the troika, Matthias Mors, deniedthat the report could be delayed, and an of-ficial at Greece’s finance ministry said he

had been assured that there would be noslippage. A U.S. official said the UnitedStates had made clear to European officialsthat it wanted to avoid any “downside” eco-nomic surprises because of the fragile U.S.recovery, but denied that it had anything todo with the U.S. election.

Several sources in Germany describedthose conversations with their U.S. coun-terparts and said the message had beenthat the Americans didn’t want sur-prises before the election. Most pollsshow President Barack Obama lead-ing his Republican rival Mitt Rom-ney, but voters remain sensitive toany event that could damageU.S. economic growth and hurtjobs. “It’s likely the troika re-port will be pushed back be-yond the U.S. electiondate,” said a Berlin officialwho spoke on conditionof anonymity. Asked ifthat was a special re-quest from Washing-ton, he replied: “Theydon’t want any surprises.”

The European Commission’sspokesman on finance said on Friday thetroika would take a week-long break from itswork in Athens, the second time it has inter-rupted its mission since it began in late July,adding to expectations of a delay.

“The inspectors are expected to returnto Athens in about a week,” spokesmanSimon O’Connor told reporters.

“As for a conclusion of the mission, Idon’t have any dates to share with you,” hesaid, adding that it should be some time dur-ing October. “We can’t say exactly when.”

“THEY DON’T WANT ROMNEY”Even if the mission does concludeits work on the ground in October,it will still take some time to write

up its findings, the focus ofwhich will be whether Greece

will ever be able to get itsdebt down to a sustainable

level.That analysis will ei-

ther show that Athenscan reduce its debtsbelow 120 percent ofgross domestic productby 2020, as required bythe IMF, or that the tar-get will be missed.

If Greece is off-targetby a wide margin, asmany economists pre-dict, financial marketswill react negatively,concerned that anotherround of debt restructur-ing will be required to getgovernment finances

back on a stable footing. A negative troikareport could also revive pressure to forceGreece out of the single currency area withpotentially devastating knock-on conse-quences for other European countries andthe global economy.

European leaders have the same inter-ests as the U.S. president in not destabilizingmarkets — their own economies have alsobeen badly affected by the fallout fromGreece, where the sovereign debt crisisbegan in January 2010.

But one source said EU leaders’ motiveswent beyond macroeconomic stability. Theyalso had political reasons to avoid rockingthe boat before the U.S. election.

“As far as European leaders are con-cerned, they don’t want Romney, so they’reprobably willing to do anything to helpObama’s chances,” said the source, an EUofficial involved in finding solutions to thedebt crisis.

The problem for Obama is that if Eu-rope’s leaders are seen, implicitly or other-wise, to be working to bolster his reelectionchances, it could provide ammunition forthe Romney campaign.

European leaders have repeatedly beenaccused of acting too slowly and in a con-fused way to resolve the crisis, with a knock-on negative impact on the United States. Ifthey are now seen to be allying with Obama,it could dent his popularity.

An EU-IMF report into whether Greece’s debt is manageable looks set to be delayed until after November 6 becausepolicymakers want to avoid any shock to the global economy before the US election, EU officials and diplomats said

Want some locomotives?ISLAMABAD: India has offered to sell locomotives toPakistan at a competitive price. The offer was madeduring the seventh round of commerce secretary-leveltalks between the two countries. According to sources Pakistan agreed to consider overbuying locomotives made in India and start directflights between Islamabad and Delhi. The sources said Indians were informed that althoughbids for the purchase of 150 locomotives against softloans had already been invited, Pakistan would placeadvertisements to buy 50 more locomotives in the nextfew weeks and they were encouraged to participate inthe bidding. The Indian delegation quoted a price of 70 million In-dian rupees per locomotive. The two-day Pakistan and India talks on promotion oftrade relations ended in Islamabad on Friday. Pakistaniside was led by Secretary Commerce Munir Qureshiwhile his Indian counterpart S. R. Rao led the Indianside. Both countries signed on three agreements. Theseagreements pertain to removing mutual trade griev-ances‚ cooperation in mutual custom affairs and agree-ment between Pakistan Standards Control Authorityand Bureau of Indian Standards. NNI

‘Negative list to bephased out by Dec 31’ISLAMABAD: The deadline for phasing out of negativelist is Dec 31 and progress is being made in this record.Talking to media, Federal Minister for CommerceMakhdoom Amin Faheem said this.Earlier, he has presided over the ceremony of signing ofTrade Agreements between Secretary Commerce of Indiaand Secretary Commerce Pakistan here on Friday. Faheeminformed that this is the 3rd meeting between the two sec-retaries. He appreciated the pace of the talks aimed remov-ing hurdles and bottlenecks in the trade related talks. The MoU’s signing are a testimony to the fact. He empha-sized the fact that the wishes of public and business com-munity will be taken into consideration. He also asked the local industries and businesses to bringdown consumer prices to facilitate people.Mr. Amin Faheem also requested Pakistan people toprotest peacefully against the blasphemous movie and notharm public and government property in the process. Earlier on, Federal Minister for commerce Mr. Amin Fa-heem held a dinner in honour of the Indian delegation atlocal hotel here which was also attended by Indian Highcommissioner Bhaglay. APP

ISLAMABAD

ONLINE

The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) onFriday rejected government’s plan to im-port 15 thousand tonnes of Liquefied Petro-leum Gas (LPG) monthly during winter.

The import of 75 thousand tonnes ofLPG which will continue for from Novem-ber to March to reduce shortage of naturalgas is aimed to personal welfare whilemasses will have to pay the bill, it said.

The top management of Sui SouthernGas Company Limited and Sui NorthernGas Pipelines Limited has been directed tobuy 500 tonnes of LPG each from SaudiAramco to be added in gas system aftermixing air in it.

Similarly, the SSGC and SNGPL, whichwill buy 250 tonnes of LPG each, has beendirected to make a deal through a broker,highly placed sources in the Ministry of Pe-troleum and Natural Resources told Abdul-lah Tariq, SVP, PEW.

The present Aramco CP (ContractPrice) for LPG is $ 946 per tonne whilebringing it to Pakistan will cost another $150 per tonne excluding taxes and other ex-penditures. The move will cost masses Rs50 million per day for five months or 7 bil-lion and 80 crores in total.

Sources further said that the brokerwith whom deal is almost final will have topay a commercial bribe of 25000 dollar (Rs23 lakh) per day which will be deposited inan offshore account of a politician.

If the supply continued for fivemonths, the total kickbacks paid by theSaudi broker will be around Rs 3.5 billion.

Abdullah Tariq said that governmentand private companies in are extracting1100 tonnes of LPG from all the oil and gaswells in Pakistan which is shrinking naturalgas. On the other hand government plansimport of LPG which will jack up cost of gasfor masses. Theft of gas has reached to 12per cent of total production or around 504tonnes. This is the same amount of gas gov-ernment wants to import but it would notstop leakage. It may be mentioned thatprice of local gas is $6 per British ThermalUnit (BTU) while cost of imported LPGstands at $ 24 per BTU.

Presently country’s total production of

gas stands at 4200 mmcfd (million cubicfeet per day) while demand in wintertouches mark of 5900 mmcfd cubic feet.

Rejected!PEW rejects LPG import plan

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02

Saturday, 22 September, 2012

Business

NEW YORK

AGENCIES

SPAIN is considering freez-ing pensions and speedingup a planned rise in the re-tirement age as it races tocut spending and meet con-

ditions of an expected international sov-ereign aid package, sources withknowledge of the matter said.

The country’s deputy prime ministerlater denied the government was mullingthe freezing of pensions and the Germanfinance minister said the country did notneed a sovereign bailout on top of thepackage already agreed for its banks.

“There is that news out of Europe,where they seem to be making moreprogress towards helping Spain out, sothat is going to continue to kind of sup-port us, for sure,” said Ken Polcari,Managing Director at ICAP Equities inNew York.

After gaining about 6 percent sincethe start of August on expectations fornew economic stimulus measures byworld central banks, the S&P 500.SPXhas seen muted action this week, barelymoving 0.4 percent in either directiondaily.

There may be increased volatility to-wards the close Friday due to ‘quadruplewitching’ - the quarterly settlement andexpiration of four different types of Sep-tember equity futures and options con-tracts. Expiration can lead to greatervolume and volatility as players adjust orexercise their derivative positions.

“The option expiry is going to createthis massive volume - as it did on theopening - at the close,” said Polcari.

The Dow Jones industrial average.DJI gained 35.00 points, or 0.26 per-cent, to 13,631.93. The Standard &Poor’s 500 Index .SPX rose 5.31 points,or 0.36 percent, to 1,465.57. The NasdaqComposite Index .IXIC advanced 17.33points, or 0.55 percent, to 3,193.29.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) climbed 0.9 per-cent to $704.80, after earlier hitting anall-time high of $704.85. The company’siPhone 5 hit stores around the world,giving the consumer giant a boost ahead

of the crucial end-of-year holiday sea-son, even as rival Samsung ElectronicsCo (005930.KS) steps up its legal chal-lenge over key technologies.

Housing shares advanced, led by an8.8 percent jump in KB Home (KBH.N)to $14.27 after the fifth-largest U.S.homebuilder posted a surprise quarterlyprofit and said its revenue backlog roseto a four-year high. The PHLX housingsector index .HGX climbed 2 percent.

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) added 0.9percent to $32.54 after the softwaremaker’s first-quarter met Wall Streetexpectations, and though the companyhardware sales are expected to dropfurther after tumbling 24 percent froma year ago.

Michael Kors Holdings Ltd(KORS.N) surged 6.4 percent to $55.85after the company said it will likely earnmore than it expected in the secondquarter as the fashion and accessory de-signer banks on strong global sales.

Darden Restaurants Inc (DRI.N)posted first-quarter earnings thatbeat analysts’ estimates, and the com-pany stood by its sales and profitforecast for the year. Shares rose 4.5percent to $57.18.

Vivus Inc (VVUS.O) plunged 11 per-cent to $21.11 after the company said itexpects a European committee to recom-mend against the approval of its obesitydrug Qsiva, based on preliminary feed-back from the committee.

Wall Street up on Spain optimism, Apple scales new peak

Stocks opened higher on Fri-

day as Spain moved toward

reform measures in anticipa-

tion of a bailout package and

as Apple debuted its latest

iPhone worldwide, sending its

shares up to a new peak.

LAHORE

STAFF REPORT

The construction work on Naulong,Nai Gaj, Ghabir and Kurram Tangidams – one each in Balochistan, Sindh,Punjab and KhyberPakhtunkhwa/FATA respectively – isbeing started on fast track basis, as theconsultants and the contractors arebeing mobilised to the sites for thepurpose.

This was stated by the PakistanWater and Power Development Au-thority (WAPDA) Chairman SyedRaghib Abbas Shah in a meeting withWAPDA senior officers here at

WAPDA House. The Chairman, whilespeaking of his priorities, said that inaddition to initiating new schemes inwater and hydropower sectors, com-pletion of the under-constructionprojects in shortest possible time isthe foremost priority of the presentmanagement of WAPDA. He said thaton-time completion of the projects isvital in view of the increasing needs ofwater and electricity in the country.He directed the project authorities toexpedite their efforts in completingthe projects, so that their benefitscould be accrued to mitigate water andpower shortfall. Dilating upon his or-ganisation’s chartered of duties, he

said that WAPDA should come up tothe expectations of the people, as itdeals with the two vital sectors in thecountry i.e. water and hydropower. Hevowed that the present managementwill leave no stone unturned to makeWAPDA an engineering organisationpar excellence, adding that any sug-gestion for improvement in function-ing of WAPDA will be highly valued.WAPDA Member (Power) MuhammadQasim Khan, Member (Finance) SyedNazakat Ali Shah, Secretary Muham-mad Imtiaz Tajwar, General Man-agers, Chief Engineers and DirectorGenerals of various formations at-tended the meeting.

KARACHI

STAFF REPORT

The Transworld Enterprise Services(TES) and its exhibited products werepositively received by conference dele-gates at the ITCN Asia exhibition, heldfrom September 18th to 20th, 2012 atthe Karachi International Expo Center.

At the event, TES showcased its Pre-mium IPT, MPLS/IPLC and Datacenterportfolios and did a soft launch for itsManaged Cloud Services. These servicesleverage the infrastructure of its parentcompany, Transworld Associates PrivateLimited, which is Pakistan’s first pri-vately owned Tier 1 submarine cable op-erator with local and internationalpeering.

“Such events have turned out to bequite successful in providing a singlevenue where one can converse withmany current and potential customers”,

commented Mr. Zulfiqar Qazilbash, VicePresident Commercial Operations,Transworld. “TES expects to signifi-cantly increase visibility through net-working and collaboration opportunitiesavailable at ITCN Asia”, he mentioned.At this occasion TES also signed a con-tract with Credit Market Solutions forproviding them premium Internet band-width.

TES, a wholly owned subsidiary ofTransworld, is providing connectivitybased services to major enterprise cus-tomers of Pakistan. These services aredesigned to achieve optimum results forenterprise requirements like broadbandconnectivity, data transmission, applica-tion hosting, and disaster recovery. Pre-mium products of TES include MPLS,Premium Internet bandwidth for busi-nesses (IP Transit), Collocation in Land-ing Station Data Center & ManagedCloud Services.

Transworld musters positive responseg Transworld Enterprise services showcases Internet and Data products at 12th ITCN Asia

WAPDA to start construction of four more damsChina vows

ongoing support to

resolve euro crisisBRUSSELS

AFP

China pledged continued assistance tohelp tackle the eurozone debt crisis, say-ing Europe was “on the right track” butneeded to implement the measuresagreed to fix its problems.Premier Wen Jiabao told EU and Chinesebusiness leaders that Beijing had contin-ued purchases of European governmentbonds in recent months and discussedcooperation with the new eurozone res-cue fund, the European Stability Mecha-nism (ESM).As the 500-billion-euro ($648 billion)ESM becomes operational next month,“China will continue to play its part inhelping resolve the European debt issuethrough appropriate channels,” Wensaid.“Europe is on the right track in tacklingits debt issue... What is crucial now is tofully implement the policies agreed” toput it on firmer ground, he told the meet-ing, held alongside the annual EuropeanUnion-China summit.The EU and China form “one of the mostimportant partnerships in the world,”added Wen.“I hold the development of this relation-ship close to my heart,” he said aftersigning a 49-point, four-page agreementwith the EU ranging from foreign policyto research and development, and thou-sands of student scholarships.

ACCI reposes

confidence in

Sayeed, MalikATTOCK

ONLINE

The Attock Chamber of Commerce andIndustry (ACCI) on Friday reposed full-confidence in the leadership of TariqSayeed and Iftikhar Ali Malik whose life-time services have earned them unparal-leled respect on national and global level.These two business leaders united thescattered and directionless businesscommunity and served their interestsselflessly for decades which helped themearn admiration as well as confidence of98 per cent of the community, said TariqMehmood, President ACCI.Speaking to business community, he saidthat Sayeed and Malik have alwaysdemonstrated leadership qualities onlocal, regional and international levelwhich has resulted in improved tradeand political relations with India, China,Iran and other countries.Tariq Mehmood said that people likeTariq Sayeed, Iftikhar Ali Malik andPresident FPCCI Haji Ghulam KadirSherani are like father figures to thecommunity which get inspiration andstrength from them.“We are all united, trust vision of ourleaders and will continue to strive for thebetterment of the country by all means,”he said.Tariq Mehmood, who is also DirectorPak-UK Business Council and ChairmanFPCCI Committee on Health, said thatour leaders have ability to get many poli-cies framed, amended and reversed forthe economic revival.They have the skills to be heard by thepolicymakers at home and abroad andtheir greatest contribution is to keephope alive in the hearts and minds ofbusiness community in the challengingtimes.

Oil rebounds in

Asia on Spanish

bailout talkSINGAPORE

AFP

Crude rose in Asia Friday on rumoursthat talks were under way to providefresh help for the struggling Spanisheconomy, analysts said.New York’s main contract, light sweetcrude for delivery in November, gained61 cents to $93.03 and Brent North Seacrude for November delivery added 48cents to $110.51.Trader sentiment was lifted by “ru-mours that the Spanish might be aboutto put on the table terms of a bailout”,said Jason Hughes, head of premiumclient management for IG Markets inSingapore.

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