Category: Information Technology

The Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) will observe the World Competition Day on December 5, 2020, with the theme ‘Enhancing Economic Efficiency of SMEs’ with the resolve to play an active role under its mandate to strengthen and support the small and medium enterprises through policy and advocacy initiatives.

On December 5, 2010, the International Network of Civil Society Organization on Competition (INCSOC) announced and proposed the first World Competition Day. Subsequently, each year, the world’s competition community celebrates the 5th of December as the World Competition Day by holding events, issuing statements, and taking other outreach measures with the intention to support consumers and promote fair play in the market.

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This year’s international theme is Competition Policy and Access to Healthcare. The Competition Law of Pakistan is a pro-business, pro-growth statute and the Commission believes in stimulating economic performance and creating a level playing field by eradicating market distortions and eliminating entry barriers.

The competition encourages businesses to compete to continuously look for better ways to satisfy their consumer base with improved quality, durability, service, and price which come to fruition in innovation. This in turn enhances the economic efficiency of businesses and particularly enables the small businesses to compete and grow.

The SME sector is the backbone of Pakistan’s economy and there is still a lot of potential for growth and innovation. The CCP realizes that the SME sector deserves a special focus in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and its sustenance will depend on the support it gets from the relevant quarters.

The CCP encourages all efforts geared at ensuring sustainable growth of SMEs and will endeavor to contribute under its mandate through issuing policy guidelines and taking advocacy initiatives for their benefit.

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CCP is working to coordinate with jurisdictions where competition agencies have contributed, directly or indirectly, towards enhancing the economic efficiency of SMEs, both in the COVID-19 situation and before.

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Chief Minister of Punjab, Sardar Usman Buzdar, has approved tentative plans to establish three national parks in the province. As per developments, Kallar Kahar, Kehri Morat, and Pibi Rasool are the targeted areas for the establishment of the parks.

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Special Assistant to the Chief Minister on Information, Firdous Ashiq Awan, tweeted regarding the development today. In the tweet, she informed that a park spanning across an area of 13,700 acres will be developed in Kallar Kahar. The remaining two parks, namely Kehri Morat National Park and Pibi Rasool National Park, will span across areas of 8,740 acres and 38,874 acres, respectively.

یہ پارکس ماحولیاتی آلودگی کم کرنے، نایاب جنگلی حیات کے تحفظ اور عوام کی تفریح کے علاوہ پنجاب میں ٹورازم کے فروغ میں معاون ثابت ہونگے۔
بزدار حکومت ماحولیاتی تحفظ اور عوامی دلچسپی کے کئی اور منصوبوں پر کام جاری رکھے ہوئے ہے۔

— Dr. Firdous Ashiq Awan (@Dr_FirdousPTI) December 4, 2020

Experts are saying that these parks will help reduce environmental pollution, protect rare species of flora and fauna, and boost tourism in Punjab.

Previously, PM Imran Khan inaugurated the Himalaya and Nanga Parbat National Parks in Gilgit Baltistan as a refuge for endangered wildlife and to promote eco-tourism.

Given the rich biodiversity in different parts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, these national parks will support rare species like snow leopards, Himalayan brown bear, Ladakh urial, ibex, markhors, and blue sheep.

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The Foreign Ministry on Thursday said that no official announcement was made regarding the suspension of visas for Pakistani citizens by the United Arab Emirates (UAE). During a weekly media briefing in Islamabad, Foreign Office Spokesperson, Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri, confirmed that the Foreign Minister had raised the issue with the UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation at the 47th OIC CFM session.

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The United Arab Emirates last month stopped issuing new visas to applicants of 13 mostly Muslim-majority countries that included Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. Reports stated that UAE temporarily suspended visas over security concerns.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, voiced his concerns to UAE’s Minister of State, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, at the 47th OIC CFM session held in Niger, Niamey.

Briefing the media, the Foreign Office Spokesperson assured that the Foreign Minister is making collective efforts to address the situation.

We understand that these restrictions only apply to visit visas and not to the renewal of existing visas. We are in touch with the UAE authorities both in Abu Dhabi and Islamabad

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As per existing reported details, the Gulf country has yet to provide an objective reason for the ban. The pandemic could be one of the reasons, as Pakistan’s COVID-19 cases have shown abnormal spikes since the beginning of November.

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Researchers at the US National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have claimed that Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, mRNA-1273, produces potent antibodies that last over three months.

NIAID researchers have made this claim after studying the immune response of 34 adults who had participated in the phase-I of clinical trials of Moderna’s vaccine. All participants were administered two shots of the vaccine 28 days apart.

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According to the NIAID study, which was published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, the antibodies, which prevent the SARS-CoV-2 virus from invading human cells, declined slightly over time, as expected, but they remained elevated in all participants 3 months after being vaccinated.

Although the antibodies diminish over time, it is not a cause of concern as the vaccine also activated a special type of immune cell that helped the immune system retain information of the SARS-COV-2 in the immunological memory, the study adds.

Director NIAID, Anthony Fauci, has said that chances are high that the Moderna’s vaccine will allow the immune system to remember the Coronavirus for a long time and will reproduce antibodies against it on exposure in the future.

The US-based medical company, Moderna, issued the detailed findings of the phase-III clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine earlier this week. It revealed that the vaccine is 100% effective in preventing severe cases of COVID-19 and offers 94.5% protection against the deadly viral infection that has killed more than 1.51 million worldwide within almost a year.

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CEO Moderna, Stephane Bancel, has said that the company has formally submitted the mRNA-1273 vaccine to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which will evaluate the vaccine on 17 December and is expected to grant it official approval.

Meanwhile, Moderna has also announced the price of its vaccine. It has decided to charge governments between $25 and $37 per dose for its coronavirus vaccine, depending on the amount ordered.

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The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has identified 7.4 million people who despite undertaking millions of rupees worth of transactions and paid withholding taxes have not registered as tax filers. This information was shared by the Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Revenues, Dr. Waqar Masood, a national daily reported.

Talking to a national newspaper, Dr. Masood said, “The FBR identified 250,000 individuals out of one million filers who claimed absolutely no income but were found to have paid Rs. 20 billion in withholding taxes”.

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He added that the FBR had selected 70,000 biggest asset holders after excluding salaried persons and served them “polite tax notices”.

The SAPM also remarked that with the increased incorporation of technology, it will become impossible to evade taxation.

The FBR has divided the database of 6.4 million National Tax Number (NTN) holders into four to five classes. It appeared that less than half (2.7 million) of the total were filing returns, while 3.7 million were not filing their returns. The SAPM disclosed that the majority of these 3.7 million people have not been filing returns for the last five years.

The lifestyle of these non-filers had been analyzed for the last three years, which brought into view that they have paid more than Rs. 100 billion in withholding taxes, indicating significant transactions.

Ruling out the possibility of an extension in the tax returns filing deadline, the SAPM said that the FBR would come up with a policy for the non-filers after the expiry of the due date for the filing of returns on 8 December 2020.

The FBR also acquired data from land development authorities like the CDA, the LDA, the KDA and others, and built a database of 8.9 million people of which approximately 1.5 million filers were excluded because they had filed their returns on average in the last three years.

“The remaining 7.4 million is our potential target,” said Dr. Masood.

The FBR also received data of 100 million subscribers from cellular mobile companies. The SAPM noted that converting such databases to taxability is challenging for which technology will be used.

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One of the achievements of this pursuit is the development of the Tax-Ray on the IRIS by the FBR website where anyone can see what kind of information the FBR possesses against each Pakistani citizen. For calculation purposes, if 250,000 non-filers are paying Rs. 20 billion in withholding taxes, it indicates that their transactions were valued at over Rs. 200 billion.

Both individuals and companies are on the FBR’s radar for nonpayment of taxes. According to the SAPM, only 45,000 companies of a total of 100,000 were filing returns. For companies, the method employed by the FBR uses the ‘Track & Trace System’ to improve tax collection, which will be used for sectors like sugar, cement, fertilizer, tobacco and beverages.

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Five Pakistani cricketers, including two women cricketers, are in contention to be named in the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) ODI teams of the decade.

The probables for the ICC men’s and women’s ODI teams of the decade were revealed on Thursday.

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As per details, three men cricketers, Saeed Ajmal, Mohammad Hafeez, and Misbah ul Haq, are among the nominees. Misbah had also been nominated for the Spirit of Cricket award of the decade.

The former Pakistan captain and now the head coach led Pakistan in the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup. He scored 3,599 runs in 97 innings, the second-most by a Pakistani since January 2010.

Mohammad Hafeez remained the leading run-scorer during the period for the national team, having scored 5,740 ODI runs in the last 10 years. The all-rounder has also claimed 101 wickets in the period.

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Saeed Ajmal, the third nominee for the men’s team has 157 ODI wickets to his credit in the last ten years. He leads the bowlers’ chart for Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Javeria Khan remained Pakistan’s top batting performer with 2,586 runs over the decade among women cricketers. Former captain, Sana Mir, in the same duration has claimed 120 wickets and scored 1,305 runs. She is also in the run for the nomination in the women’s ODI team of the decade.

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Prime Minister Imran Khan chaired a meeting on the implementation of the mobile device manufacturing policy. A detailed briefing was given in the meeting regarding the implementation of the Mobile Device Manufacturing Policy by the Ministry of Industrial Production.

The meeting was informed that Pakistan is a huge market in terms of mobile phones with about 40 million mobile phones purchased annually in the country. The meeting was also informed that after the implementation of the Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS), mobile phone smuggling has come to an end due to which the duty revenue has increased from Rs. 22 billion to Rs. 54 billion.

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It was further informed that after the implementation of this system, many international companies are now showing interest in manufacturing mobile phones locally in Pakistan.

The Prime Minister said that our aim is to increase industrial production in the country. He directed that obstacles to foreign investment and industrialization should be removed and all possible facilities to promote local manufacturing and assembling should be ensured.

He said that development in the industrial sector would increase the country’s income and provide better employment opportunities to the people.

Minister for Industrial Production Hamad Azhar, Trade Adviser Abdul Razzaq Dawood, Finance Adviser Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Advisor on Institutional Reforms Dr. Ishrat Hussain, Special Assistant Dr. Waqar Masood, Board of Investment (BOI) Chairman Atif Bukhari, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Chairman Javed Ghani, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Major Retired Amir Azeem Bajwa, and other senior officials also attended the meeting.

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