Government has decided to introduce new taxation measures of Rs103 billion in the budget for 2011-12, mostly in the form of indirect taxes which will add to the burden on the common man.

General Sales Tax rate to be brought down from 17% to 16%

* Rs 364 billion to be generated through broadening tax base

[Pakistan Budget 2011 & 2012]

This decision is aimed at keeping the budget deficit below four per cent — a condition that will pave way for release by the International Monetary Fund of a tranche of $1.3 billion..
He said an amount of Rs261 billion would be netted as a result of several factors, especially the rising inflation next year. The IMF has projected that Pakistan’s inflation next year could exceed 15 per cent which will contribute to an increase in the share of general sales tax in total collection.
According to the official, the base figure, a benchmark for revenue measures, has been set at Rs1,588 billion, considerably less than the collection target for 2010-11. But the IMF has estimated the figure at around Rs1,580 billion.

[Latest Budget Updates on Facebook]

An FBR official said the failure to achieve the revenue target of Rs1,588 billion by the end of June as agreed with the IMF might lead to revision of all macroeconomic indicators.

[High Lights Of  Pakistan Budget 2011 & 2012]

Pakistan Finance Minister Mr. Hafeez Sheikh Presents Pakistan Finacial Budget for the fiscal year 2011-2012. During the Budget Speech Oppositiion continuosly chants the Government and their policies towards Country soverghnity and Security. Pakistan Budget 2011 presents by Finance Minister Mr. Hafeez Sheikh with all other assembly members and speaker. Opposition members chant slogans against government ‘ America ki Ghulami Na Manzoor, Namanzoor’.

Here is the glance of the Pakistan Budget for the fiscal year 2011-2012.

Federal government has announced the budget for the fiscal year 2011-12 with an outlay of Rs 2.767 trillion.

Finance minister Hafeez Shaikh presented the budget amidst sloganeering from the opposition benches.

Members of the opposition continue to shout slogans against.

“Jhoot bolna band keroo”

“Load shedding band keroo”

The finance minister has started the budget presentation.

Opposition members are chanting slogans against the government.

“Amreeki ghulami naa manzoor”

Salient Features of The Budget:

• - The 2011/12 budget outlay is 2.767 trillion rupees ($32 billion), up 14.2 percent from the 2010/11 fiscal year, even though he had earlier quoted the outlay at 2.504 trillion rupees in the budget speech.
• - The budget targets a fiscal deficit of 4 percent of gross domestic     product (GDP) for 2011/12.
• - GDP growth is targeted at 4.2 percent.
• - Aim to contain inflation at 12 percent.
• - Reduction of the general sales tax (GST) to 16 percent from 17   percent.
• Federal excise duty on soft drinks has been reduced to 6%.
• More than 71,000 people have been issued tax notices, the government is expected to collect Rs 3 billion during the first stage.
• The government has allocated Rs 32.5 billion for WAPDA.
• The finance minister ended the speech with the following couplet:
• Tundi-e-baad-e-mukhalif se na ghabraa aey dost
• Ye to urti hay tujhe ooncha uraane ke liye
• GST has been reduced from 17% to 16%.
• All special excise duties have been abolished.
• The government will bring  2.3 million people into the tax net.
• The government has recommended that more than 390 regulatory duties be withdrawn.
• The budget outlay for fiscal year 2011-12 is Rs 2.5 trillion.
• Fiscal deficit will be 4% of the GDP.
• Revenue collection is expected to be more than 9% of the GDP.
• We will use Utility Stores to bring relief to the people.
• PSDP will focus on completing existing programs and working on new program.
• Rs 50billion has been allocated for transport sector
• We have set aside Rs 28 billion for Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jamm & Kashmir.
• The federal government has set aside Rs 40 billion for health and education, despite it these being provincial subjects.
• Pension has been increased by 15%-20%.
• Forex reserves are more than $17 billion.
• We will try to maintain growth at 7% for a steady period.
• Inflation will be brought down to single digits.
• The speech is barely audible over the shouting of the opposition, who have shifted from chanting slogans to random shouting.
• “We are with those who are giving their lives to the country,” says the finance minister.
• Sheikh congratulates the Prime Minister and opposition leader amid slogans from the opposition.
• “Pakistan today is one where democracy has flourished,” says Sheikh.
• Sources say Rs40 billion has been allocated for the National Highway Authority.
• A raise of 15% has been approved for the salaries of government employees, sources have said.
• The federal cabinet has approved the budget.
• Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar has rejected the budget stating
• GST will likely be lowered from 17% to 16%.
• Special excise duties are likely to be abolished.

Mobile Wallet

The idea of the mobile wallet is gaining popularity around Europe. The first service that allows users to pay for purchases via their mobile phone has been launched in the UK. Users wishing to use the system – dubbed Quick Tap – will need Orange and Barclaycard accounts as well as a handset set up for contactless payments.

Quick Tap is a collaboration between Orange and Barclaycard. It will require a NFC-enabled Samsung Tocco Lite handset. Only purchases up to a value of £15 can be made using the service but users can preload their mobile with up to £100.

David Chan, chief executive of Barclaycard Consumer said: “Having a wallet on my phone has made it much more convenient to make purchases on the move and I like that it allows me to keep track of what I’m spending as I go,”

Pippa Dunn, vice president of Orange said: “It is going to start a revolution in the way we pay for things on the high street,”

Among shops signed up to the system are McDonalds, EAT, Pret-a-Manger and some Boots stores. Other stores signed up the service include Subway, Little Chef, Wilkinson and the National Trust.

The State Bank of Pakistan will begin issuing from Saturday a Rs 20 memorable coin to celebrate 2011 as the Pakistan-China friendship year. The memorable coin was launched on Friday on the occasion of the 60th Anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China.

2011 Year of Pak China Friendship written on the top of the coin.

The coin will have a diameter of 30mm and its weight would be 9.5 grams. The observer of the coin shows the waxing crescent and a five pointed star facing northwest in rising position.

Pakistan telecommunication authority reports to block approximately  3.5 million SIM cards not registered by its users.

As a rule Pakistan, mobile users must include the identity of the SIM card before purchasing. After that, they also have to perform re-verification process, following the many reports of false information or has not been updated.

PTA allows all operators related to block as many as 875 thousand SIM cards every week, until all accounts that have not verified it blocked.

After the SIM has been blocked, users can only make call to number 789 just to verify their details on each operator for the service back in operation. Number 789 is a system of automatic verification of real-time where customers must confirm their details through NADRA database by way of answering a secret question, such as mother’s name or place of birth, before the SIM card can be activated again.

Customer of each operator has a period of one week to comply with instructions PTA and re-verify their data. After this Deadline the SIM cards will be blocked.

LONDON — Hours before Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Dublin on Tuesday for the first visit by a reigning British monarch to the Irish Republic, the army there defused a pipe bomb discovered in a tote bag in the luggage compartment of a bus heading for the capital.

The bus was traveling from Ballina in the west of Ireland toward Dublin and the device was found in Maynooth, 40 miles from Dublin. About 30 passengers had left the bus when it was stopped and searched, apparently after a tip by an informant, the police said.

News agencies reported that the Irish police also found a sham device, harmless but meant to appear to be a bomb, at a tram station in North Dublin. And a bomb threat that was received in London was regarded as credible by the police.

Despite the alarms, the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, flew into a military airfield outside Dublin, shrouded by one of the biggest security operations in recent years, both for the monarch and for President Obama, who is scheduled to visit the country early next week. The combined security effort is estimated to cost as much as $42.4 million, a large sum for a country in a deep economic slump.

The queen’s four-day visit, heavy with symbolism, is meant to finally signal reconciliation between Britain and a country that fought a bitter independence war against the British throne early in the 20th century.

While the queen has traveled regularly to Northern Ireland, no reigning monarch had visited the Republic since the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922; the queen’s grandfather, King George V, was the last British monarch to visit there, in 1911, when Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom.

The queen is to lay a wreath later Tuesday at a garden of remembrance, honoring those who fought against her forebears. She is also to visit the Croke Park stadium where British forces fired into a crowd during Ireland’s independence war and killed 14 people.

The Irish President, Mary McAleese, told the state broadcaster that the queen’s visit was “an extraordinary moment in Irish history,” while David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, said there was “a great sense of history and occasion” to the visit. But the symbolism was offset by questions of security.

Planned routes for the queen to travel while in Dublin have been cleared for days of parked cars, and access to some areas has been blocked. More than 5,000 manholes, culverts and drains have been checked and sealed. Even the Dublin Zoo, which is close to where the queen will be staying, will be closed for two days.

Police north and south of the Irish border have arrested dissident republicans, detaining some of them, and surveillance is high. Citizens are being subjected to random searches around Dublin and elsewhere.

The measures reflect worries that dissident republicans who are opposed to both the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland and to the very presence of a British monarch on the island will mount some kind of attack. Weeks before the monarch’s visit, dissident republicans in Northern Ireland appeared armed and with their faces masked in a cemetery in Northern Ireland to warn Elizabeth that she was not welcome.

On Monday, the British police said that they had received a credible bomb threat in central London on the eve of the queen’s journey.

In a statement, a spokesman for Scotland Yard said on Monday that “a bomb threat warning has been received” but that it was “not specific in relation to location or time.”

Some areas of London were cordoned off, but no device was found, leading police to assume that the coded message was a hoax meant to complicate Elizabeth’s plans.

Central points around Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace were cordoned off as the police investigated the threat, and a suitcase left outside a hotel was destroyed by the police on Monday morning. Parts of the Mall were also shut down.

Police officials urged Londoners to be vigilant, but the threat designation for Irish-related terrorism had not been increased.

While the source of the threat remained unclear, suspicion immediately fell on dissident Irish republicans who have opposed the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. The government includes the mainly Protestant unionists, who seek to keep the province a permanent part of Britain, and the mainly Catholic republicans, who want a united Ireland.

Opinion surveys suggest that many Irish people do not object to the monarch’s visit, but a minority remains opposed, accusing Britain of occupying Northern Ireland to thwart aspirations for a single Ireland.

In summer Generator prices in pakistan becomes double and people are forced to buy such expensive generators. Rapid growth and import recorded in this power sector. As the temperature rices in the summer, loadshedding increases in the metros and becomes worst in the villages of the pakistan.

If Pakistan Government immediatly don’t plan for this problem then it will cost them billions of dollars in shape of imported machines, fuel consumptions and power needs. Several dams to be made also alternative energy production sources should also be used.

Leading Imported Generator brands in PAKISTAN.

• Honda
• Yamaha
• Kohlar
• Perkins
• Cummins
• SDMO
• Caterpillar
• Johndeer
• Loncin
• Enpower
• Green Power

and various Good Quality Chinese Brands.

Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas plans to a build a $20bn (£12.3bn) factory complex to produce chemicals and refine crude oil.

The facility will be located in the southern state of Johor, bordering Singapore.

Petronas says the strategic location is close to deepwater ports, international shipping lanes and areas of high energy demand.

The project is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2016.

According to state-run Petronas, the facility will house a crude oil refinery, a naphtha cracker and a complex that produces petrochemicals and polymers.

The refinery will have a processing capacity of 300,000 barrels per day for the production of petroleum products such as gasoline, jet fuel, diesel and fuel oil.

At the project launch, Prime Minister Najib Razak said the $20bn commitment signified “Petronas’s ambitions to capture the opportunities Asia’s dynamic energy and chemical markets are expected to provide”.

Police say he faces three charges, including attempted rape. His lawyers say he denies the claims.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, 62, was taken off an Air France plane at JFK airport just minutes before it left for Paris.

The BBC’s Hugh Schofield, in Paris, says Mr Strauss-Kahn has been riding high in the polls and was seen as having a genuine chance of beating President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The married former French finance minister is also considered a possible Socialist candidate for the presidency.

Martine Aubry, leader of France’s Socialist Party, described news of his arrest as a “thunderbolt” which left her “astounded”.

Mr Strauss-Kahn is expected to appear before a New York state court later on Sunday, Reuters reports.

He had been scheduled to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday, but that meeting has now been cancelled, reports say.

On Monday he had planned to attend a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Brussels on Monday to discuss the bailouts of Portugal and Greece.

respondents say his detention is likely to complicate ongoing efforts to stabilise the finances of struggling eurozone member states.

In a brief statement posted online on Sunday, an IMF spokeswoman acknowledged Mr Strauss-Kahn’s arrest and said the organisation would not comment on the case.

“The IMF remains fully functioning and operational,” she added.

‘Locked in’

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s arrest unfolded in dramatic fashion as he was poised to fly to Europe.

A spokesman for New York’s Port Authority said they detained Mr Strauss-Kahn at JFK airport at the request of the New York Police Department (NYPD).

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said Mr Strauss-Kahn had been charged with a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment relating to an incident involving a 32-year-old woman.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn

• Born 25 April 1949 in Paris
• Attended France’s prestigious Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Po)
• Becomes finance minister in 1997
• Loses bid for Socialist Party presidential candidacy to Segolene Royal in 2006
• Selected IMF head in 2007

Mr Browne said the allegations had been made by a 32-year-old woman who worked at the hotel, which has been identified as the Sofitel near Times Square. His accommodation there was described by the New York Times as a luxury suite costing $3,000 per night (£1,900).

“We received a call that a chambermaid in a hotel in midtown Manhattan had been sexually assaulted by the occupant of a luxury suite at that hotel, and that that individual had fled,” Mr Browne told the BBC.

“The maid described being forcibly attacked, locked in the room and and sexually assaulted,” he said.

Speaking to Reuters, Mr Browne gave more details on the allegations against Mr Strauss-Kahn.

“She told detectives he came out of the bathroom naked, ran down a hallway to the [suite] foyer where she was, pulled her into a bedroom and began to sexually assault her, according to her account.”

“She pulled away from him and he dragged her down a hallway into the bathroom where he engaged in a criminal sexual act, according to her account to detectives. He tried to lock her into the hotel room.”

Mr Strauss-Kahn then made his way to the airport but left his mobile phone and other items behind, Mr Brown said.

“It looked like he got out of there in a hurry.”

By the time police established that the occupant of the room was Mr Strauss-Kahn, the IMF chief was on board an Air France plane at John F Kennedy airport, about to depart for Paris.

“Our detectives requested of the airport authorities that they stop the plane from leaving, went to the airport and took him into custody,” Mr Browne said.

“If our officers had been 10 minutes later he would have been in the air and on their way to France.”

The woman has been treated at hospital for minor injuries, said Mr Browne.

‘Error of judgement’

Mr Strauss-Kahn ran for leadership of the French Socialist Party in 2006 but lost to Segolene Royale.

He was appointed managing director of the IMF the following year.

Mr Strauss-Kahn has won praise for his stewardship of the IMF, which he has guided through difficult times including the recent world financial crisis.

Police say the allegations were made by a 32-year-old woman working at the hotel

But in 2008 he was investigated by the IMF board over his relationship with a female member of his staff.

The board ruled his actions “reflected a serious error of judgment” but that the relationship had been consensual. He apologised to IMF staff and his wife, French TV personality Anne Sinclair.

Mr Strauss-Kahn has not yet announced whether he intends to run in the 2012 French presidential elections, but had widely been expected to do so.

World Top Bank List:

1 .Oversea-Chinese Banking (Singapore)
2. Svenska Handelsbanken (Sweden)
3. National Bank of Canada
4. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
5 .DBS Group Holdings (Singapore)
6 .United overseas Bank (Singapore)
7 .Fifth Third Bancorp (U.S.)
8. Banco Bradesco (Brazil)
9. UBS (Switzerland)
10 .BOC Hong Kong (Holdings)
11 .Banco Santander (Brazil)
12. Toronto Dominion Bank
13. Credit Suisse Group (Switzerland)
14 .JPMorgan Chase (U.S.)
15 .Standard Chartered (U.K.)
16 .CitiGroup (U.S.)
17. Royal Bank of Canada
18 .Hang Seng Bank (Hong Kong)
19. Bank of Montreal
20 Sberbank (Russia)

Moody’s Top 10 Banks
Issuer/Entity Bank Financial Strength Rating (BFSR)
1 .The Toronto-Dominion Bank                          B+
2 .The Bank of New York Mellon                         B+
3. Rabobank Nederland                                      B+
4. Hang Seng Bank Limited                                 B+
5 .Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp.        B+
6 .U.S. Bank National Association                       B+
7. Commerce Bank, N.A.                                     B+
8. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Ltd                B
9. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA                               B
10 .National Australia Bank Limited                   B