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July 29, 2018 Equity and bond markets have welcomed Imran Khan's victory in Pakistan's disputed election, but the former cricket hero faces a tough slog to avert a currency crisis and implement long-term reforms needed to end decades of boom-and-bust cycles. Khan's first major economic call will be to decide whether to ease pressure on the rupee by seeking Pakistan's 12th bailout from the IMF since the late 1980s. Harder still will be to persuade more people to pay taxes in a nation famous for tax dodging, turn off subsidy taps draining government coffers, and reform loss-making state-run enterprises that past governments have struggled to sell off. Pakistan's central bank has devalued the currency four times since December, weakening the rupee by more than 20 per cent, amid efforts to avert a balance of payments crisis in the $305 billion economy. A similar scenario in 2013 led to Pakistan obtaining a $6.7 billion loan from the IMF. While the econ...

The Indian Express July 30, 2018 Militants entered a house in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district Sunday and fired at a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel who was home on leave. The CRPF man, Naseer Ahmad Rather, succumbed at the district hospital, police said. Rather was the first Kashmiri CRPF personnel to have been killed in the Valley while on leave. Militants had earlier killed an Army Lieutenant in South Kashmir and a Border Security Force (BSF) personnel at Hajin in North Kashmir while they were home on vacation. “Terrorists this evening barged inside the house of a local CRPF man Naseer Ahmad Rather at Naira village and shot at him injuring him critically,” a police spokesman said. “Naseer was immediately evacuated to district hospital Pulwama for medical treatment where he succumbed to his injuries.” Rather was with the CRPF’s 182 Battalion, police said. Reference: https://indianexpress.com/article/india/jk-crpf-man-on-leave-shot-at-and-injured...

The Indian Express July 30, 2018 After an appeal from his family seeking his release, militants on Saturday evening released Special Police Officer (SPO) Mudasir Ahmad Lone, who was abducted on Saturday morning. Lone, who worked as a police cook at Awantipore, was abducted by militants from Kitar Chan area of Tral in south Kashmir’s Pulwama. Soon after his abduction, Lone’s family appealed to militants to release him without harm. “I seek your forgiveness on behalf of my son, and he won’t commit any mistake in future. If he has committed any mistake please forgive him,” the SPO’s mother had said in a video. “You are my children. I request you to release him safely. If there would be any complaint in the future, then kill of us,” she had said. Before his release, militants released a video in which Lone asked other SPOs to quit their jobs. Lone is the third police personnel to be abducted by militants from his home while on leave. While he was lucky to be released with...

The Indian Express By Karishma Mehrotra  July 30, 2018 On Friday, a committee in the Ministry of Information and Electronics Technology submitted the draft of a Bill on protection of personal and sensitive data, along with a report of analysis. Both introduce some key terms to the data protection debate: DATA PRINCIPAL:  It is the person, company, or entity whose information is being collected. “Data” means information that is represented in a form that is more appropriate for processing. “Processing” refers to the operations done to the data, often forms of organisation, searching, combining, and more to glean further information. DATA FIDUCIARY:  This can be a person, state, company, or any entity that decides why data should be processed and how it should be processed. Unlike the Ministry committee, others sometimes refer to this as the “data controller”. SIGNIFICANT DATA FIDUCIARIES:  This classification is based on the volume and sensitivity of the...

Live Mint, July 30, 2018  Till March this year, there was no way that Aditya Birla Group was getting to acquire Aleris Corp.—an ambition it first harboured in August 2017 when symptoms of a potential failure started to crop up between an earlier agreed upon merger between China’s Zhongwang USA LLC and the Cleveland-based American company. Zhongwang was to buy Aleris for $2.33 billion. The US Department of Justice was closing in on Liu Zhongtian, majority owner of Zhongwang USA, whose affiliate Perfectus Aluminium Inc. was accused of evading $1.5 billion in tariffs by illegally importing aluminium into the US. This development happened even as president Donald Trump was readying ground for a trade war with China and sought ways to turn its economy inwards. Several Chinese takeovers of US companies faced heightened scrutiny by the Trump administration. In September, the administration blocked a Beijing-backed fund’s attempt to buy an American chip maker, Lattice Semicondu...

     The Hindu, By Ravi Kumar       July 29,2018 For the $17.3 billion Indian pharmaceuticals export sector, there could be no better time than now to look beyond its largest market — the U.S. An upsurge in challenges in the U.S. market — from the long-standing regulatory issues to increased pricing pressure amid a tougher policy approach on the part of the Trump administration — coincided with a decline in India’s shipments to the world’s largest market for medicines last fiscal. Exports fell 7.4% to $5.35 billion in the 12 months ended March, from $5.77 billion in 2016-17. ‘Exports to U.S. shrink’ North America, primarily the U.S., accounted for more than 30% of India’s pharma exports in FY18. While it may continue to remain the single largest destination for some more time to come, the fact is it also was the only market to have recorded a contraction in India’s drug export basket. With the headwinds in the U.S. showing no signs of abat...

Live Mint, By Nikita Kwatra July 29, 2018 The real estate sector is still reeling under the impact of the triple whammy of demonetization, the roll-out of goods and services tax, or GST, and the introduction of new real estate regulations, the latest data from the project-tracking database of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) suggests. New real estate projects launched in the June quarter were the lowest since 2005, the data shows. New project launches dropped by 29% from the previous quarter and by 60% from the year-ago period. In terms of project costs, the value of new projects launched in financial year 2017-18 was 23% lower than that of 2016-17 and 5% below 2015-16. Of the new projects launched in the June quarter, Farrukhnagar Industrial Park Project worth ₹ 600 crore is the largest among the projects for which data is available. The stalling rate in real estate projects remains high, despite a marginal decline in the June-ended quarter. The average ...

The Tribune,By Shabaz Rana July 29, 2018 The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has activated its three-year $4.5-billion oil financing facility for Pakistan that will give stability to rupee-dollar exchange rate in the interbank market that has largely remained under pressure. The International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC), a member of the IDB Group, rolled over a loan of $100 million this week, said sources in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs. The Economic Affairs Division (EAD) secretary signed the Letter of Amendment for the credit facility. The move comes amid unconfirmed reports that Saudi Arabia may soon come to Pakistan’s rescue as the latter is facing a severe strain on the external financing front. The last Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had sought $5 billion in aid from Riyadh, but it did not succeed. Now, hopes are high that the new government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) may get assistance of around $2 billion fr...