Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Tuesday said that Pakistan and the US will continue to strengthen their economic partnership as both sides agreed to advance negotiations on reciprocal tariffs through constructive engagement, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.<\/p>\n
Pakistan faces a potential 29 per cent tariff on its exports to the US due to a $3 billion trade surplus with the world\u2019s biggest economy, under tariffs announced by Washington in April on countries around the world.<\/p>\n
While speaking at an event in Islamabad today, Aurangzeb said he had a constructive and positive conversation with the US Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, last night. He said that both countries are moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government will stay the course of reforms in taxation, energy and other sectors,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have also carried out tariff reforms to move towards competitive economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aurangzeb continued that both sides agreed to advance negotiations on reciprocal tariffs through constructive engagement, aiming to finalise the trade deal at the earliest.<\/p>\n
The discussions focused on meaningful engagement in trade, investment, and strengthening mutually beneficial economic ties, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth sides also agreed that further technical-level discussions would take place in the coming days, following a mutually agreed roadmap,\u201d the finance minister added.<\/p>\n
As regards pension reforms, the finance minister said the Defined Contribution Pension Scheme is a \u201cwin-win\u201d for both the government and the employees.<\/p>\n
In June last year, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet approved major changes to the federal government\u2019s pension system. The finance ministry said federal government employees would contribute 10pc of their basic pay while the government would contribute 20pc.<\/p>\n
At today\u2019s event, Aurangzeb said the government has increased the pension of retired employees by 7pc in line with inflationary trends.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have also proposed a 5pc tax on pensions above Rs10 million while protecting low and middle income pensioners,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Two important visits from Pakistan to the United States \u2014 one by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and the other by a trade delegation \u2014 due this week were postponed due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, official sources told Dawn earlier this week.<\/p>\n
The three-day visit would be the latest in a series of high-level exchanges between Islamabad and Washington amid a fragile regional security climate following last month\u2019s military standoff between India and Pakistan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Tuesday said that Pakistan and the US will continue to strengthen their economic partnership as both sides agreed to advance negotiations on reciprocal tariffs through constructive engagement, state-run Radio Pakistan reported. Pakistan faces a potential 29 per cent tariff on its exports to the US due to a $3 billion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10084,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10082\/revisions\/10084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}