
IMF team arrives in Pakistan to discuss ninth review
The Hindu
The four-day visit comes after Pakistani rupee dived to a historic low against the United States dollar recently
A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in Islamabad to discuss the ninth review of the $7 billion Extended Fund Facility, which will start on January 31, ARY News reported.
According to a Pakistani television broadcast citing the sources, Pakistan and the IMF will hold technical talks for the first four days, wherein economic data from different departments will be reviewed.
Also Read | Explained | Will shutting markets fix Pakistan’s economy?
Earlier, the international fund organization’s Resident Representative for Pakistan Esther Perez Ruiz said: “At the request of the authorities, an in-person Fund mission is scheduled to visit Islamabad [from] January 31 to February 9 to continue the discussions under the ninth EFF review,” reportedDawn.
The Pakistani rupee has dived to a historic low against the United States dollar after an exchange cap was lifted as the cash-strapped country seeks the help from IMF.
Earlier, Pakistan entered a $6 billion programme in 2019 but later on, it increased to $7 billion. If everything goes well then the international organization would release $1.8 billion, which is still pending, according to Dawn.
It had earlier been put off for two months due to the Pakistan Muslim League-N-led government's unwillingness to accept certain conditions placed before it by the IMF, and the disagreements have yet to be resolved. However, it is pertinent to mention that Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has indicated that the government is finally ready to swallow the bitter pill of the IMF's "stringent" conditions to revive the loan programme.

GCCs keep India’s tech job market alive, even as IT services industry embarks on a hiring moratorium
Global Capability Centres, offshore subsidiaries set up by multinational corporations, mostly known by an acronym GCCs, are now the primary engine sustaining India’s tech job market, contrasting sharply with the hiring slowdown witnessed by large firms in the country.

Mobile phones are increasingly migrating to smaller chips that are more energy efficient and powerful supported by specialised Neural Processing Units (NPUs) to accelerate AI workloads directly on devices, said Anku Jain, India Managing Director for MediaTek, a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor firm that claims a 47% market share India’s smartphone chipset market.

In one more instance of a wholly owned subsidiary of a Chinese multinational company in India getting ‘Indianised’, Bharti Enterprises, a diversified business conglomerate with interests in telecom, real estate, financial services and food processing among others, and the local arm of private equity major Warburg Pincus have announced to collectively own a 49% stake in Haier India, a subsidiary of the Haier Group which is headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong, China.










