SANGHAR: Federal Minister for Petroleum and Minerals Syed Naveed Qamar Sunday said the completion of Pak-Iran gas pipeline project will help overcome the country?s gas crisis.

Speaking to media persons after the inauguration ceremony of a gas processing plant in Sanjar Junejo village here, he said all the matters relating to Pak-Iran gas pipeline project have been finalized and that all is set to sign the project on March 8.

He said 12.5 per cent royalty of Pakistan?s oil and gas is going to the provinces, which, he said, have been directed to spend this amount on the uplift projects of the areas.

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DUBAI: International Monetary Fund (IMF) lauding the steps taken by Pakistan towards economic stability, assured Pakistan of its continued association in future for improvement of the country?s economic condition.

Adnan Mazari, an IMF official, expressed these views in Dubai during a fourth review meeting of the Fund for releasing loan to Pakistan.

Federal Minister for Finance, Shaukat Tarin represented Pakistan at the meeting.

Spokesman of Federal Board of Revenue said Governor State Bank of Pakistan Salim Raza, Finance Secretary, Chairman FBR and other officials were also present.

The review meeting will continue till Febraury 16.

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Pakistan News

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait’’s Zain telecom on Sunday confirmed it has received an offer for its operations in 15 African nations but did not reveal the identity of the bidder.

The company said in a statement posted on the Kuwait Stock Exchange website that its board of directors will meet on Sunday to study the offer, also without revealing its value.

The KSE immediately suspended trading in the shares of its largest listed firm until it receives notification of the outcome of the meeting.

Kuwait’’s Al-Rai newspaper reported on Saturday that India’’s largest mobile operator Bharti Airtel has offered 10.7 billion dollars to buy Zain’’s African units, except in Sudan. Zain also said the deal does not include Morocco.

Zain entered the African market in 2005, buying the assets of Dutch Celtel for 3.5 billion dollars.

Later, Zain made key acquisitions in several other African nations, including Nigeria.

Zain also operates in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia as well as Kuwait.

Zain’’s share price rose more than 20 percent and its capitalisation gained three billion dollars to 16.1 billion dollars over the sale reports.

Last summer, Zain declined an offer from French telecom and media group Vivendi, reportedly at between 10 billion and 11 billion dollars, saying the price was below expectation.

Earlier this month, Zain accepted the resignation of Saad al-Barrak as its CEO. On Thursday, it appointed former communications minister Nabil bin Salama to replace him.

Since joining the company in 2002, Barrak transformed Zain from a local company with less than one million subscribers to an international telecom firm operating in 23 nations with 72 million subscribers.

The process required massive investments that exceeded 12 billion dollars.

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KARACHI: Holding out flowers on Valentine?s day is the most beautiful way to make your love speak volumes to your beloved one; accordingly, the love birds are planning to gift red rose to their beloved; but, they are suggested to up their budget on this day.

This is for the reason that flowers price has burgeoned from normal to exorbitant. The city is looks beautiful from place to place bestrewed with flowers especially red roses.

This day with abundant presence of flowers signals the arrival of spring and the flower sellers acknowledge that they earn a lot of profit on the day, when love birds actually go out to get a fresh piece of expression of love on the Valentine´s Day Sunday.

Those wishing to gift a whole bouquet instead of a single piece should be ready to spend higher price depending on the number of flowers they wish to mark the day of love.

“The huge demand of red roses for the day is the major reason behind the surge in their prices,” said a shopkeer. Despite the rise in prices, he is confident of making a good business on the day. ?There can be thousands of ways for celebrating love, but the value of a rose — particularly the red one — is more than anything else,? he stated.

Giving red rose for Valentine´s Day has been a time honored tradition for lovers. Even before the historic date when St. Valentine is said to have sacrificed his life for love, roses have played a significant part for lovers.

The price for rose is also determined by its size. The price is higher for larger stem, whereas smaller ones costs relatively less, he further said.

The price also varies with the color. Valentine´s classic red roses are expensive, whereas yellow, orange, purple, white or pink roses cost relatively cheaper.

There are some people who come to Karachi to earn good profit by selling their flowers in the city, creating some ripples in the stagnant economy of the country.

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ISLAMABAD: The federal government on Friday directed provinces to ensure that sugar mills maintain 15 to 20 per cent stock and asked the interior ministry to check sugar smuggling at Khokhrapar, Torkham and Chaman borders to avert its shortage in future.

The Sugar Advisory Board (SAB), in a meeting chaired by Federal Minister for Industries and Production Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, reviewed sugar production, stocks and prices.

The board was told that 2.3 million tons of sugar has been produced so far while estimated consumption throughout the country this year is 4.2 million tons.

To meet the shortfall of 1.1 million tons, the Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) has been tasked to import 0.5 million tons of sugar in March, while the government is negotiating with Dubai authorities for import of another 0.7 million tons.

The board asked the provincial governments to place their representatives at every sugar mill in order to monitor production on daily basis.

?This is the responsibility of the provincial governments to adopt an effective and transparent mechanism to check daily production of each sugar mill, who is buying sugar, where it is being stocked,? the board said.

It also asked that Provincial governments must ensure that there is no hoarding. The Provincial governments must root out the hoarding menace. The governments should ensure that sugar mills in their respective provinces must maintain 15 per cent to 20 per cent stocks of their production to meet emergency.

The Interior Ministry has been asked to take stringent measures to check smuggling of sugar at Khokhrapar, Torkham and Chamman borders. A letter has been written to Interior Ministry in this regard.

The Board has decided that Utility Stores Corporation would continue to sell sugar at Rs45/-kg at its outlets.

Federal Minister for Food and Agriculture Nazar Muhammad Gondal, Federal Secretary Food and Agriculture, Provincial Secretaries for Agriculture and Industries of the four provinces, Federal Secretary Commerce, Additional Secretary Industries and Production, Aditional Secretary Finance, senior officials from State Bank of Pakistan and Federal Board of Revenue, Managing Director Utility Stores Corporation, Chairman TCP, and Cane Commissioners from Islamabad, Punjab, Sindh, and NWFP attended this meeting.

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Pakistan News

SYDNEY: The global downturn has had a serious impact on poor nations and risks reversing improvements made in some countries, the head of the United Nations Development Programme Helen Clark said.

Clark, who was New Zealand’’s prime minister from 1999 to 2008, said the world was already struggling to reduce poverty and hunger and raise living conditions for those in the developing world.

“The economic crisis does not make it easier,” she said in a speech to Sydney’’s Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think-tank.

“It does raise the prospect of going backwards on some of the progress that had been made.”

Clark said prior to the global recession the number of chronically hungry people was estimated at 800 million people but had since risen to about one billion.

In the Pacific alone, thousands had fallen back into poverty since the financial downturn rattled world markets in the later half of 2008.

“Last year we estimated that five Pacific island countries saw an outright contraction in the economy because the recession had eroded the limited income that they had from exports, eroded their tourism and eroded their remittances,” Clark said.

“We estimate that across the Pacific Islands, countless thousands of people and families have fallen back into poverty.”

Clark said as the world dealt with massive humanitarian crises, such as the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, it needed to “build back better” so the developing world could better withstand future shocks.

“In the past two years alone the world has experienced major food and fuel crises, a global recession and climatic and other natural disasters,” she said.

“Thinking also needs to be given now on the focus of building back better so the world has greater resilience to withstand shocks in the future. Shocks in many forms will keep coming, whether natural disasters or human-induced disasters.”

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KARACHI: The price of cotton soared to Rs5000 per maund with an addition of Rs200 within a week in the local market, Geo News reported Saturday.

The cotton season nears its end in the country; while, its price is making new records.

According to market sources, the local traders are expecting further raise in the cotton prices in view of burgeoning prices of cotton in the international market.

The cotton price surged to 75 cents per pound with an addition of 9 cents within a week.

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NEW YORK: U.S. industrial stocks stumbled after China said it would take more steps to keep its economy from growing too fast.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 45 points but had fallen as much as 160 points. Shares of three Dow stocks with extensive business overseas all fell more than 1 percent.

Stocks ended mixed but the Dow and other major indexes postedgains for the week, their first after four losing weeks.

The Dow fell 45.05, or 0.4 percent, to 10,099.14. The Standard Poor’’s 500 index dropped 2.96, or 0.3 percent, to 1,075.51, while the Nasdaq composite index rose 6.12, or 0.3 percent, to 2,183.53.

For the week, the Dow and the SP 500 index each rose 0.9 percent while the Nasdaq jumped 2 percent.

In Asia, Tokyo?s market, closed Thursday for a public holiday, led the region?s gains. Japan?s Nikkei 225 stock average rose 128.20 points, 1.29 percent, to 10,092.19 and the Shanghai Composite index was up 32.63 points, or 1.09 percent, to 3,018.13.

South Korea?s Kopsi closed down 4.15 points, or 0.26 percent, at 1,593.89. Australia?s benchmark was flat while markets in Thailand closed up 0.38 percent and Malaysia rose 0.32 percent. Indian markets were closed Friday for a public holiday.

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BRUSSELS: Europe’’s economic recovery has stalled, new data out showed, with the heavyweight German economy slowing to a halt in the fourth quarter of 2009 and Italy switching back to contraction.

Economic growth in the 16 nations using the euro single currency was a meagre 0.1 percent over the previous quarter compared to 0.4 percent growth in the third quarter, data agency Eurostat said.

Gross domestic product fell by 4.0 percent over the whole year, it added.

Elsewhere in Europe, growth slowed to 0.3 percent in the Netherlands and to 0.4 percent in Austria but the recovery sped up in France, where growth was at 0.6 percent for the fourth quarter compared to 0.3 percent in the third.

There was a mixed picture in Central and Eastern Europe too. The Czech Republic fell back into contraction following two quarters of growth, while Hungary’’s prospects were brighter as the contraction slowed to 0.4 percent.

Europe in general has begun to emerge from what is in most cases record recessions, but the recovery process is expected to be slow and bumpy because business investment and consumer consumption are still weak in many cases.

Full year figures showed that Germany, the biggest European economy, contracted by 5.0 percent in 2009, France by 2.2 percent, the Netherlands by 4.0 percent, Austria by 3.6 percent and the Czech Republic by 4.3 percent.

The latest German data showed that “the recovery of the German economy lost momentum at the end of 2009,” the Destatis office said in a statement.

The German economy is heavily dependent on exports and once again they made the only positive contribution in the final three months of the year, since consumption and business investment were both down, Destatis said.

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund nonetheless forecast German growth of 1.5 percent this year, slightly higher than the government’’s forecast of 1.4 percent.

“Today’’s numbers are a setback but no disillusion,” ING senior economist Carsten Brzeski stressed in reference to the German figures.

“The eurozone growth engine has taken a break in the fourth quarter but it should return soon,” he added, while noting that the numbers were “a good reminder that recoveries can not only be bumpy but also capricious.”

UniCredit economist Andreas Rees said that “the situation of the German economy is fundamentally far better than it looks like from a statistical viewpoint.”

But “with the recent return of risk aversion in financial markets, doubts about the strength of the recovery have again emerged.” Brzeski warned.

In its estimate, Eurostat also said that, compared with the same quarter in 2008, seasonally adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 2.1 percent in the eurozone.

In the full 27-nation European Union, growth also rose by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the previous three months, and decreased by 2.3 percent over the year.

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ISLAMABAD: Minister for Finance Shaukat Tareen has said US has to pay Pakistan USD 2.10 billion in cooperation for war on terrorism, Geo news reported.

He said half of the money will be deposited to Pakistan by the mid of March.

Talking to media after the Task Force conference organized in view of Private Sector Development, he said we have resolved the issues of US visas and now a total of 1.30 billion US dollars will be deposited to Pakistan in the month of March for fighting against terrorism.

Government and private sectors are importing sugar in country according to requirement while the wheat stock is also in abundance in country but the corrupt administrative matters are causing the inflation at alarming level.

Ruling out reports of his resignation, he said neither will I run away nor resign.

Responding to a question regarding loadshedding, Shukat Tareen said the government is already providing 80 to 100 billion rupees in terms of power subsidy.

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