Digitex

Pakistan has struggled for long to attract higher volumes of foreign direct investment (FDI) to expand and modernise its rather stagnant economic base. Pakistan’s investment level is almost half the volume of investment attracted by growing economies like Vietnam, India, Bangladesh and SriLanka. In order to accommodate two million young Pakistanis entering the labour market every year, Pakistan needs to double its investment to GDP ratio. Business leaders blame Pakistan for lack of policy consistency, repressive taxation, high utility costs, cumbersome procedures, weak contract enforcement and dispute resolution capacity. One is then not surprised to see Pakistan’s current ranking of 136 out of 190 on the Ease of Doing Business Index. The good news, however, is that Prime Minister Imran Khan made it his priority to improve ease of doing business. As a result of the coordinated efforts led by the Board of Investment, Pakistan has been acknowledged by the World Bank among the top ...

United Kingdom Daily Death Toll of 980   The UK death toll for coronavirus has risen to  10,612  in the largest daily increase for hospitalised patients in Europe to date. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said 980 more patients had died in hospital as of 5pm on Thursday. Italy – where around 18,800 people who tested positive for the virus have died in total – saw its highest daily death toll peak at 969 , while Spain’s worst day for fatalities was when it recorded 950 deaths. Meanwhile France has reported more than 1,000 daily deaths in the past, but unlike the UK, these figures included both the numbers of hospital patients and people in nursing homes who had died. France has only recently started counting care home deaths in its daily statistics, although some of these may have happened more than a month ago. The UK government said the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases rose to  84,279  today  , while 256,605 people have bee...