The local condiment and spice king, National Foods has been on a roll, of late. Backed by strong double-digit volumetric growth in a number of categories including recipe mixes, salt and desserts, the incremental growth in the firms top line for the period can largely be explained by heightened consumer acceptance of packaged food items.
Not being connected to the SNGPL network is a blessing for fertilizer manufactures in Pakistan. Fatima Fertilizer, the countrys leading CAN and NP producer and a major urea manufacturer reaped the benefits of comparatively better feedstock gas supply during the 1QCY13. This coupled with other favourable factors helped Fatima Fertilizer quadruple its profits year-on-year.
Karachi may be the political fortress of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), but winning the NA-250 constituency has never been a done deal, even for that party.
First they embarked on a brick by brick development for themselves. Now they have jointly agreed to fund $4.5 trillion in infrastructure projects for themselves and for the developing world. The BRICS are at it.
With the SBP tightening its noose around the banking sector, nearly all the industry players - big or small - seem battening down the hatches. However, for small banks like NIB, the current economic backdrop appears more troublesome, necessitating additional efforts.
More than half of Pakistani youth will be able to cast their vote for the very first time next month. Importantly, a healthy 62 percent of the 25 million youth, termed as Next Generation by the British Council, intends to come out and vote.
Trade balance figures for nine months ending March are out and much has been said about it in this paper and elsewhere. The key to watch, however, is the import numbers which stood at $4.34 billion in March.
