Pakistan to invite local businessmen in renewed push to privatize loss-making national airline

KARACHI: Pakistan’s central bank cut its key policy rate by 100 basis points to 12 percent on Monday, the governor told reporters, for a sixth straight reduction since June as the country attempts to revive business and economic sentiment amid easing inflation.
The State Bank of Pakistan has slashed rates by 1,000 bps from an all-time high of 22 percent in June 2024, in one of the most aggressive moves among central banks in emerging markets and topping the 625 bps in rate cuts it did in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bank’s governor Jameel Ahmad said at a press conference that the inflation rate would ease further in January but noted that core inflation remained elevated. He said the forecast for full-year inflation in the year to June was an average of 5.5 percent-7.5 percent.
Fourteen of 15 analysts surveyed by Reuters expected the central bank to cut its key rate by at least 100 bps mainly due to a drop in inflation.
Pakistan’s consumer inflation rate slowed to an over 6-1/2-year low of 4.1 percent in December, largely due to a high year-ago base. That was below the government’s forecast and significantly lower than a multi-decade high of around 40 percent in May 2023.
Pakistan’s economy grew by 0.92 percent in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2024-25 which ends in June, according to data approved by the National Accounts Committee, and released by its Statistics Bureau in December.
The governor said that the bank maintained its forecast full-year GDP growth at 2.5 percent-3.5 percent.

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistan court has sentenced four men to death for posting blasphemous content online, a member of a group of “vigilante” private lawyers that brought the prosecution said on Monday.
The four men were sentenced in Rawalpindi, the garrison city that neighbors the capital Islamabad, Rao Abdur Raheem, a lawyer from the Legal Commission on Blasphemy Pakistan (LCBP), told AFP.
Blasphemy is an incendiary charge in Muslim-majority Pakistan, where even unsubstantiated accusations can incite public outrage and lead to lynchings.
Pakistan has witnessed a sharp increase in the prosecution of “online blasphemy” cases, with private groups bringing charges against hundreds of young individuals for allegedly committing blasphemy.
“They were sentenced to death... on Friday for spreading blasphemous content online against the Prophet Muhammad and the Qur’an,” Raheem told AFP on Monday.
“Our case was supported by forensic evidence from the devices used in this heinous act,” he said of one of the LCBP’s latest prosecutions.
Despite the conviction, Pakistan has never executed anyone for blasphemy.
A member of a support group formed by the families confirmed the sentence to AFP and said the group would challenge the conviction.
“The pattern of arrests and prosecutions in this case is consistent with previous ones,” said the support group member, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
“We urge the government to establish a commission to investigate the rise in these cases before these young individuals spend the best years of their lives behind bars.”
Many of the online blasphemy cases are being brought to trial by private “vigilante groups” led by lawyers and supported by volunteers who scour the Internet for offenders, rights groups and police say.
The LCBP is the most active of those groups in Pakistan.
Sheraz Ahmad Farooqi, one of the group’s leaders, told AFP in October that “God has chosen them for this noble cause.”
A report published by the government-run National Commission for Human Rights in October last year said there were 767 people, mostly young men, in jail awaiting trial over blasphemy allegations.
“In these cases, due process was notably disregarded, with significant procedural violations observed at multiple stages,” the report said.
“Arrests were often carried out by private individuals rather than law enforcement.”
Cases can drag through the courts for years, although death penalties are often commuted to life in prison on appeal at the Supreme Court.
A special court was formed in September to expedite the dozens of pending cases.