State Bank of Pakistan has cut its benchmark interest rate for the first time in four years.
The Central Bank of Pakistan has cut its target policy rate by 75 basis points to 12.50% from 13.25%.
Bloomberg noted that Pakistan’s consumer price inflation slowed to 12.4% in February from 14.6% in the previous month, with gains in price-growth expected to ease further on account of lower global oil prices.
The committee adopted cautious approach on policy rates that will maintain the inflation rate while it can stir up economic activities to some extent.
The report stated that Tuesday’s decision marks a shift in monetary policy direction for Pakistan’s central bank, which had raised its target policy rate nine times since January 2018 despite a wave of global easing last year.
The easing will help boost credit demand in the economy, whose growth the World Bank sees decelerating to 2.4% in the year to June — the slowest pace in more than a decade.
Central banks across Asia-Pacific have..
Category: Ufone
Ministry of Commerce Introduces E-Visa Facility for Businesses
The Ministry of Commerce, in collaboration with NADRA, has launched an e-Business Visa Invitation Letter System (E-BIL), another step towards easing business.
Chambers and Trade Associations can e-file applications for business visas on arrival for nationals of 190 countries. The applications will be processed in 48-78 hrs.
The Ministry of Commerce is now providing an E-Business visa facility, in collaboration with NADRA. All Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Pakistan and Trade Associations are connected to it for uploading visa invitation letters.
According to the Commerce Ministry, in the light of the Prime Minister’s vision, E-BIL is launched to facilitate all potential foreigners interested in exploring business opportunities in Pakistan.
Foreign nationals can apply for a business invitation letter (a required document for Pakistan’s business visa application) through E-BIL’s website.
Tecno Launches Ultra-Clear Challenge With 6 KOLs
Tecno is committed to push the boundaries of mobile photography with the launch of Camon 15. Tecno came up with an exciting Ultra clear Challenge, with the collaboration of six famous Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs).
The first part of the challenge, ‘Ultra-high clear’, involved KOLs Saboor Aly, Mariyam Nafees, and Ukhano tested the picture quality and resolution of a picture taken from the highest altitude.
While in “Ultra Dark challenge”, the KOLs Anum Hakeem, Guddu Shani, and Bilal Munir (VideoWaliSarkar) tested the resolution and quality of a shot taken in low light. All the celebrities were amazed by the result and further invited Tecno fans to become a part of the same challenge and get a chance to win Camon 15.
General Manager of the brand, Mr. Creek Ma shared his views about upcoming Camon 15,
Tecno feels immense pleasure on inheriting the rich spirit of the Camon Series, this latest addition would give our valuable customers high creative possibilities allowing them to discover ..
Leak Reveals Redmi K30 Pro Live Images and Official Launch Date
The Redmi K30 Pro is set to arrive this month, succeeding last year’s Redmi K30 Pro/Mi 9T Pro with top of the line specifications and similar design aspects.
We’ve only seen the device in mock-up renders so far and now, a few days ahead of its launch, the phone has appeared in a set of hands-on images that confirm the design leaks we saw before.
The device is encased in a design-concealing pre-production phone cover but it clearly shows some of its design elements. There is a circle-shaped quad-camera setup at the back right above the LED flash. The main camera on this setup is expected to be a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor we saw on the base Redmi K30/Poco X2.
The pop-up selfie camera is on the left side and there also appears to be an infrared sensor on the right.
Redmi’s General Manager Lu Weibing shared a teaser on Weibo earlier that revealed that there is also going to be a “Redmi K30 Pro zoom version”.
There are no details on this yet, but we can expect an enhanced edition of the ..
Coronavirus Cases in Pakistan Double in Just 24 Hours to 186: Live Updates
As more coronavirus cases are testing positive, that have more than doubled in just past 24 hours, the federal and provincial governments are fast becoming the target of mass criticism for the measures that were in place, despite an early warning and examples from other countries we had in advance.
Governments (both provincial and central) argue that these cases are mostly foreign returners and toll has risen rapidly only because results of clinical tests are now becoming available.
Not to mention, majority — more than two third of — cases are those who returned from Iran, while there are also cases that were Dubai, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria returners.
Despite all these new cases, no major lock-down is announced, for any of the cities in the country. However, with rising cases, a mass-scale lock-down seems imminent.
Here are the latest updates on Coronavius for the day:
9.20 amUAE Suspends Prayer in Mosques and All Houses of Worship UAE’s state news agency WAM reported that th..
Jazz Announces Country-Wide “Work From Home” Policy for Two Weeks
Jazz has announced that it is implementing mandatory “Work from Home” policy for its country-wide operations, starting immediately.
Aamir Ibrahim, CEO Jazz, who is leading the coronavirus prevention drive at the company, announced this new policy in an email that’s sent to the entire company a while ago.
“I wanted to assure you that in these difficult times, your wellbeing is my foremost concern”, wrote Aamir in the email. But said that during this challenging time the company also has an obligation towards the nation for providing parallel cellular, banking and communication services.
Considering the best known measure to defeat coronavirus, Aamir announced:
Jazz will be moving to a mandatory work-from-home policy nationwide from March 17 to March 31, 2020
Given the size of Jazz, as a corporation and the scope of services it offers, the decision is massive. Not to mention, company has business continuity plan in place, meaning that customers will continue to avail Jazz and JazzCa..
Pakistani Researchers Claim to Have Developed the Cheapest Coronavirus Testing Kit
The COVID-19 outbreak has already spread to over 130 countries and the number of patients continue to increase. Increasing cases are also creating a shortage of the expensive COVID-19 detection kits. Researchers across the world are trying to find ways to reduce the testing cost by devising cheaper kits.
Researchers from a Pakistani university have claimed to have produce a coronavirus kit that is even cheaper than any other iterations.
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Syed Murad Ali Shah Explains the Coronavirus Situation in Sindh
Prof Dr. Muhammad Idrees and his team of students at the University of Punjab have managed to create a testing kit that will be able to diagnose coronavirus among patients and cost only $5, or 800 rupees.
This is much cheaper than kits that have been previously produced which cost around 3200 rupees.
While talking to the media, Professor of Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology Dr. Muhammad Idrees said that they had been working on the kit since January and were able to ..
Syed Murad Ali Shah Explains the Coronavirus Situation in Sindh
Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah has revealed that 11 more suspected patients have tested positive for coronavirus. All of them were from the mandatory quarantine in Sukkar. While addressing a press conference in Karachi, Murad said that a total of 394 tests have been done in Sindh. Out of them, 27 people tested positive and are being treated.
About Sukkar Quarantine Facility He said that the pilgrims returning from the Taftan border were again quarantined in Sukkar, where their samples were retaken. Out of those, 50 people tested positive for the virus on Sunday, while 11 more positive confirmations arrived as he spoke, taking the provincial tally to 88. More results are expected later tonight, he added.
Speaking of the quarantine facility in Sukkar, CM Murad Ali Shah said that they had vacated the labor department’s flats.
We have 1024 flats of the labor department with two rooms each, so we had the capacity of 2048 individuals.
Exposing the Taftan Blunder Syed Murad Ali ..
Medical Firm Claims Its Coronavirus Vaccine is Ready for Human Trials
Following the outbreak of Coronavirus in December last year, Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) had allocated $12.5 million to three medical firms to expedite the development of the vaccine of COVID-19; Moderna, Inovio, and University of Queensland.
Now, the researchers at Moderna are claiming that they have developed the COVID-19 vaccine at unprecedented speed and will soon begin clinical trials.
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Israel Says It Will Introduce Coronavirus Vaccine in 90 Days
Moderna is a US-based biotechnology company that specializes in vaccine development by converting viral sequences into messenger RNA (mRNA).
Chief Medical Officer (CMO) at Moderna, Tal Zaks, says that the medical firm had already recruited volunteers for the clinical trials in the first week of March.
I don’t think proving the vaccine in an animal model is on the critical path to getting this to a clinical trial.
However, this is not the way how vaccine testing happens normally.
Medical firms ar..
Pakistan Govt Launches Urdu Twitter Chatbot For Coronavirus Updates
Tania Aidrus, head Prime Minister Imran Khan’s ‘Digital Pakistan’ initiative and the former Google Head of Strategic Initiatives on the Next Billion Users (NBU), has announced a coronavirus focused Urdu chatbot to provide Pakistanis with authentic information.
In her attempt to fight the current epidemic outbreak and to help the locals, Tania Aidrus decided to collaborate with the telemedicine companies and startups.
As expected, several firms, companies, and startups jumped at the opportunity of working with her, which is why in such a short span of time, she came up with this effective way of getting information out to Pakistanis.
The chatbot is equipped to provide users with authentic information regarding the current situation of the epidemic in the country. Apart from getting the latest news, people can also get all the information regarding the nearest laboratories that can help them carry out a self-assessment test.
The chatbot can be accessed via Facebook messenger here. If..
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