profitepaper pakistantoday 09th september, 2012

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Sunday, 9 September, 2012

Let there be no further interruption ‘Uninterrupted gas to industries on priority’ FAISALABAD

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R Asim Hussain, Adviser to Prime Minister on Petroleum and Natural Resources, said the provision of uninterrupted gas supply to the textile industry was priority of the government to bring the forex earning sector back on track.

Addressing textile exporters at the Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) on late Friday, he said President Asif Ali Zardari had already directed to make a roadmap for the revival of the textile industry.

Dr Asim appreciated the role of textile exporters in the development of the country and said that they had played a role in putting the country on the path to economic prosperity.

“The Textile industry is the mainstay of exports and a symbol of Pakistan’s manufacturing excellence and the government will extend full support to textile exporters and make the business community a partner in national development as both would work together for the betterment of the economy,” he added.

He said that severe shortages of gas in the country called for extraordinary measures on war footing and Iran-Pakistan and Turkmenistan-AfghanistanPakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline projects were being pursued to increase gas supplies.

He said that gas load-shedding would be less in the coming winter than it was in the previous year. “Import of LNG will lessen gas shortages but it will take some time,” he added.

He further said gas production would increase by another 400 million

ISLAMABAD

cubic feet per day by mid 2013, which would narrow the gap between supply and demand.

Regarding the Gas Infrastructure Development Surcharge, the federal adviser said the government had reduced the cess by 50% on demand from industrialists. He announced that paid gas development charges would be refunded in future bills.

Earlier Rana Arif Tauseef, Chairman Pakistan Textile Exporters Association, welcomed the federal adviser. In his welcome address, he explained in detail problems faced by the textile industry.

NNI

Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf who is also Minister Incharge of Information Technology chaired a meeting of the Ministry of IT here on Saturday to review its working. The Prime Minister was briefed about the working of the Ministry as well as steps taken by the Ministry for auction of 3G Spectrum. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf issued directions that transparency and merit are ensured and the entire process is carried out according to rules and regulations. The meeting was attended by Mr Basit Riaz Shaikh Advisor to Ministry of IT and other senior officials of the Ministry.

Clinton hopes US to end Russia trade curbs VLADIVOSTOK AFP

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced hope Saturday that the US Congress would act this month to end Cold War-era trade restrictions on Russia but also raised concerns on human rights.

The so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment of 1974 tied US commerce with the then Soviet Union to human rights, depriving normal trading relations in a bid to pressure Moscow to allow emigration of its Jewish community.

President Barack Obama’s administration has pushed for the repeal of the measure as it goes against the rules of the World Trade Organisation, which Russia entered last month with support of the United States.

Clinton said that Russia’s WTO membership “is good for Russia, it’s good for America and it’s good for the global economy”, and said that repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment would “make sure our companies get to compete”. “We hope that the Congress will act on this

important piece of legislation this month,” Clinton said in a speech to an Asia-Pacific summit in the Russian port city of Vladivostok.

While Jewish emigration is no longer a major issue, a number of US lawmakers have voiced concern about Russia’s human rights record as well as other policies, including its military sales to war-ravaged Syria’s regime.

Lawmakers have pushed for the replacement of Jackson-Vanik with a new law that would deny visas and freeze assets of Russian officials involved in the 2009 death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison. Magnitsky, who was jailed after charging financial wrongdoing by government officials, allegedly died of torture and untreated medical conditions.

A senior State Department official said that Clinton “raised our ongoing concerns about human rights in Russia” during talks in Vladivostok with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The official declined to give more details about the discussion but said that Clinton addressed “recent sentences” and new Russian laws seen as restricting freedom of speech and the activities of non-governmental groups.

The United States has criticised Russia for jailing the dissident punk rock group Pussy Riot over a performance in a Moscow church.

LCCI rings the alarm bells Warns of serious consequences against further hike in PoL prices LAHORE ONLINE

Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry Saturday warned the government of serious consequences if it makes any further increase in the prices of petroleum products.

In a statement issued here, the LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said that a series of protests, in consultation with all the trade and industrial associations, would launched against weekly increase in the petroleum products and the federal government would be responsible for any untoward situation.

The LCCI President said that the business community was unable to understand that under what law the government is making repeated upward increases in the petroleum prices when it always make POL products purchases for three months.

He said that the government should

revisit its petroleum prices fixation formula and make it acceptable to business community that is the main stakeholder to all economic policies.

Irfan Qaiser Sheikh asked as to how a businessman would be able to calculate the prices of his merchandise when he is unaware of their input cost. It is not the electricity alone that has destroyed economic activity but the government itself is responsible for economic meltdown by taking steps like petrol hike.

He said that the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry had a number of times asked the government to take Chambers of Commerce onboard while taking industry-related decisions but to no avail. “If repeated increase in the fuel prices would be made, the entire economy would suffer and the same happened in Pakistan in the last many months as the repeated hikes in the POL prices had ruined the industrial and economic activities.”

The LCCI President said that only because of high cost of doing business in Pakistan, a large number of industrial units had already shifted their operations to other countries and the recent decision would force more industrialists to shift their industrial units.

He said that Government is producing huge amount of electricity through thermal means and after increase in petroleum prices, prices of electricity would touch new highs.

Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said that the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry had for the last many years been calling on the concerned government circles to take measures for the promotion of alternate fuels as trade deficit was fast widening due to heavy imports under the head of petroleum products.

He was of the view that the timeline for the increase in the prices of petroleum products was also raising questions because at a time when the whole industry

‘Ensure transparency for 3G Spectrum auction’

was suffering due to energy crisis and high cost of doing business, the raise in POL prices is bound to give a death blow to the industry. “It seems that it is an attempt to create troubles for the government.”

Clean Energy Expo Asia 2012 from Wednesday ISLAMABAD ONLINE

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is organizing a three-day Clean Energy Expo Asia 2012 which is starting from Wednesday in Thailand as Asia needs clean energy to power sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Clean Energy Expo Asia will provide a platform to discuss and tap into the latest advancements in green technologies and clean energy research while networking with prominent business leaders, policy makers, academics and innovators from the clean energy sectors in Asia and beyond.

Clean Energy Expo Asia will address key regulatory as well as technological issues delving into the areas of Solar, Wind, Biomass, Hydro, Waste to Energy, Energy Efficiency, Building Retrofitting, Smart Grids, Renewable and Energy Efficiency Financing and Sustainable Mobility Solutions. The Bank said the conference will bring together the entire clean technology ecosystem helping assess and accelerate financially proven advancements from development to implementation.

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Business 02 Oil rises as jobs data reinforces stimulus hopes Oil prices rose in volatile trading after a disappointing US August jobs report weakened the dollar and bolstered expectations for stimulus from the US Federal Reserve, even while denting the outlook for petroleum demand NEW YORK

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RENT and US crude futures posted small weekly losses, after five straight weekly gains and a surge of more than 9 percent in August.

U.S. nonfarm payrolls increased by only 96,000 last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, below the forecasted rise of 125,000. While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, it was largely due to Americans giving up the search for employment.

Oil prices received a lift from expectations that the jobs report increases the likelihood that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s two-day policy meeting next week will result in a third round of monetary stimulus, known as quantitative easing or QE3.

Additional stimulus is expected to weaken the dollar, which is usually supportive to dollar-denominated commodities like oil. The dollar was broadly weaker on Friday, with the dollar index .DXY down nearly 1.0 percent, with the U.S. currency dropping to a near four-month low against the euro. Brent October crude rose 76 cents to settle at $114.25 a barrel, having swung between

$112.34 and $114.65.

For the week, Brent slipped 32 cents. U.S. October crude rose 89 cents to settle at $96.42 a barrel, below the 200-day moving average of $96.62, after trading from $94.08 to $96.74 during the session.

For the week, U.S. crude lost only 5 cents. Money managers raised their net long U.S. crude futures and options positions in the week to September 4, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday.

U.S. RBOB gasoline futures rose nearly 1 percent. Even at the session high of $3.0541 a gallon, there was a significant gap still to be closed to reach $3.1056, where the September contract expired and went off the board last Friday. U.S. heating oil futures rose, but only 0.2 percent.

“It was a decidedly negative report due to the meager number of jobs created in August and the downward revision for the two prior months,” said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York. “However, the data are clearly disappointing enough to allow for a third round of quantitative easing, which lends support to commodity

prices and would enable a run at $100 per barrel for (U.S.) crude,” he added.

China’s approval of a multibilliondollar infrastructure program helped push key industrial feedstock copper, another dollar denominated commodity, to its highest price in nearly four months.

MULLING RESERVES RELEASE: The possibility that strategic oil reserves may be released by the United States and other major oil consumer governments hemmed in oil prices, after U.S. government officials met oil market experts on Thursday as the White House considers the merits of another release.

While oil companies work to restore energy operations on the U.S. Gulf Coast after Hurricane Isaac, the government’s report on Wednesday showed domestic crude oil stockpiles, excluding the SPR, fell 7.43 million barrels in t h e

France’s richest man turns to Belgium as wealth tax looms BRUSSELS AFP

Bernard Arnault, the richest man in France and the world’s fourth-wealthiest, confirmed reports Saturday that he was seeking Belgian nationality as Paris moves to impose a 75-percent wealth tax.

But the 63-year-old billionaire head of the LVMH luxury goods empire denied he planned to be a tax exile and said he would also keep his French citizenship. The Belgian daily La Libre Belgique earlier quoted Georges Dallemagne, the head of the Belgian parliament’s naturalisation commission, as saying that Arnault’s application would be treated the same as all the others.”

“We currently have 47,000 before us,” he told the paper. Belgian legislation requires applicants for citizenship to have had at least three years residency in Belgium, barring which they need to prove ties to the country, Dallemagne said.

Arnault lives in Paris and has a home in Brussels, the daily said. “Contrary to the reports published today, Mr Bernard Arnault states that he is and will remain a French tax resident,” a statement put out by Arnault’s press office said.

“If he obtains dual French-Belgian nationality it would not change this position, nor his determination to pursue the development of the LVMH group and the creation of jobs in France which this engenders.”

The statement said Arnault’s move was linked to plans for his own private Groupe Arnault “to expand its numerous activities in Belgium.” “Mr Arnault, who is from northern France, has many personal and family ties with Belgium as well as on the professional front,” it added.

His application comes amid a debate on one of the main pledges that France’s President Francois Hollande made during the election campaign earlier this year — to impose a 75-percent tax on incomes above one million euros.

Press reports this week said that the government was looking to water down the measure by raising the threshold to two million euros for couples and excluding capital gains. But on Friday Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici vowed that the campaign promise would be “strictly” implemented.

The new tax is due to be included in the 2013 budget, which the government expects to finalise later this month. Arnault, whose fortune is estimated to stand at 41 billion dollars by Forbes magazine, was a close ally of France’s former right-wing president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Following the election of France’s previous Socialist president Francois Mitterrand in 1981, Arnault lived in the United States for three years, returning to France after the Socialists switched to a more conservative economic course.

week to August 31. U.S. regulators said 36.35 percent of daily oil production in U.S.-regulated areas of the Gulf of Mexico remained shut on Friday, an improvement of 6.63 percentage points from Thursday.

MIDDLE EAST UNCERTAINTY: The threat persists that violence in the Middle East could escalate and disrupt flows of oil from the region. A blast outside a mosque in Syria’s capital on Friday killed five security personnel and wounded others.

Britain, France and Germany called on their European Union partners on Friday to impose new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. The EU’s embargo on Iranian crude is in its third month.

Canada suspended diplomatic relations with Iran, closing its embassy in Tehran and giving Iranian diplomats in Canada five days to leave the country, Foreign Minister John Baird said, calling Iran the biggest threat to global security.

Dollar falls, gold rallies as jobs data spurs Fed hope The US dollar sank against major currencies and gold prices jumped to a six-month high as anemic American jobs growth fueled investor bets that the Federal Reserve will launch another round of monetary stimulus for the world’s biggest economy, perhaps as soon as next week.

NEW YORK AGENCIES

Yields on safe-haven U.S. Treasuries slumped on the disappointing August jobs data, while yields on Spanish and Italian government debt extended their slide to multi-month lows after the European Central Bank on Thursday announced plans to combat the region’s three-year-old debt crisis by buying sovereign bonds. The prospects for ECB action supported the euro early in the session, and the currency extended its gains after the U.S. Labor Department reported nonfarm payrolls increased by 96,000 in August, well below forecasts for 125,000 new jobs. The Federal Reserve starts a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, and markets will keenly await the U.S. central bank’s statement issued on Thursday and a media briefing by Chairman Ben Bernanke. “This weak employment report, in jobs, wages, hours worked and participation is probably the last piece the Fed needs before launching another round of quantitative easing next week,” said Joseph Trevisani, chief market strategist at Worldwide Markets in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. “QE will boost equities, damage the dollar and do little for the economy, but what else can an activist Fed do?” The U.S. dollar fell 1.0 percent to 80.194 against a basket of major currencies .DXY. The euro touched around a four-month high against the dollar of $1.2814 before paring gains to trade at $1.2810. Against the Swiss franc the common currency rose to its highest level in eight months. U.S. gold jumped to $1,740.80, the highest since late February.

U.S. stocks seesawed as investors weighed the chances for more quantitative easing from the Fed, which would pump money into the economy to try to boost growth. The Dow Jones industrial average ended up 14.64 points, or 0.11 percent, to 13,306.64.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index closed up 5.80 points, or 0.40 percent, to 1,437.92.

The Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.61 points, or 0.02 percent, to 3,136.42. “I think the market doesn’t really know what to do.

What I suspect will happen is, for the rest of today and all through Monday and Tuesday, the market is just going to probably go sideways in anticipation of that FOMC meeting,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas. The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was up 2/32, the yield at 1.6695 percent, after falling sharply in price on Thursday when news of the ECB plan reduced the need for safe-haven bets. The FTSEurofirst 300 equity index closed at 1106.72, up 0.18 percent on the day. Ten-year Spanish bond yields slid to 5.646 percent, their lowest since early April. The MSCI world equity index .MIWD00000PUS climbed 1.2 percent to 330.24. The index is back to its level of early May, when demand was still being supported by a massive injection of cheap three-year funds into the banking system by the ECB. Oil prices rose in volatile trading on expectations of Fed stimulus, even as the weak jobs data dented the outlook for petroleum demand settled up 0.93 percent at $96.42 a barrel. Brent October crude rose 76 cents, or 0.67 percent, to settle at $114.25 a barrel.

Sunday, 9 September, 2012