Asian Bank approves $810m for power transmission system

ISLAMABAD: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday approved an $810 million multi-tranche financing facility to develop Pakistan’s power transmission system aimed at improving the reliability and quality of energy supply, and to meet increasing demand for electricity.

The loan facility will help fund the staged rehabilitation and expansion of the transmission network, increasing transmission capacity and energy efficiency and security.

Under the arrangements, $800m will come from ADB’s ordinary capital resources while $10m will be financed through the Asian Development Fund.

It will also support government efforts to develop a more transparent and efficient power sector by promoting reforms in the National Transmission and Despatch Company Ltd, and the sector’s newly established commercial operator, the Central Power Purchasing Agency (Guarantee) Ltd. ADB’s facility will be delivered in tranches, implemented from 2016 to 2026.

To achieve this, the investment programme includes staged physical investments in the transmission system to increase transmission capacity, improve efficiency and energy security, and evacuate additional sources of power; and non-physical investments to support institutional efficiency, cost recovery, competition, transparency and good governance within the sector.

“A reliable and sustainable power sector is critical to the economic growth and well-being of Pakistan,” said Megan Wolf, Energy Specialist with ADB’s Central and West Asia Department. “Fast implementation of this facility and related reforms to alleviate power shortages will improve the prospects for the economy.”

Power shortages are a major obstacle in Pakistan’s economic development. With demand for electricity outpacing supply, inefficient and inadequate transmission and distribution systems are key bottlenecks in the development of the energy sector that is stifling growth and threatens social strife.

Chronic power shortages are estimated to have reduced GDP growth by at least 2pc in 2012 and 2013, and are considered the major cause of the slowdown in large-scale manufacturing, which grew at only 1.1pc in FY12 and 4.1pc in FY13.

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Ukraine sees solar power as Chernobyl´s future

KIEV: Imagine one of the largest solar farms ever at the site of the world´s worst man-made nuclear disaster that struck Chernobyl in modern-day Ukraine and sowed panic across Europe.
That is the grand vision of Ukrainian Environment Minister Ostap Semerak, backed up by big-time investors such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The Chernobyl catastrophe of April 1986 left thousands dead or dying and created a contaminated no-man´s land in northern Ukraine in which only a few hundred elderly people still cling on to their homes.
The 30-kilometre-wide (19-mile-wide) "exclusion zone" surrounding the stricken station is primarily covered in forests and filled with radiation levels that make most foods produced there unsafe.
But Ukraine believes there are also around 6,000 hectares (15,000 acres) of open land that can be filled with solar panels that may one day produce about as much energy as Chernobyl´s ill-fated reactor number four did in its time.
The EBRD has already said it was willing to support the project as long as Ukraine attracted the $1 billion (1.1 billion euros) needed to fulfil its first stage.
Ukraine is keen to break its dependence on energy giant Russia in the wake of a 2014 pro-EU revolution that was followed by the Kremlin´s annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of a pro-Moscow insurgency in the country´s east that has claimed more than 9,500 lives.
About 50 percent of the former Soviet republic´s energy is still produced by its remaining nuclear stations. Thermal power generation makes up for much of the rest.
Official statistics show solar panels accounting for less than one percent of the energy consumed in Ukraine.
The very first stage of the project should see Ukraine partner up with two private foreign firms to build a few small solar plants that generate about six megawatts of power by the end of this year.
That is still just a tiny fraction of the 4,000 megawatts pumped out by Chernobyl in its Soviet-era heydays.
Semerak thinks investors will be drawn by existing electricity lines and a professional personnel that is working on cleaning up the remainders of the Chernobyl station and installing a giant dome around it to keep the atmosphere safe.
Semerak adds that purchasing land required for the solar farm is remarkably cheap because it is unsafe for farming and has little other use.
Yet questions remain about whether Semerak´s plan is actually feasible.
Foreign investors view Ukraine with a great deal of caution because of the separatist conflict and its tensions with Russia as well as corruption that has permeated both the government in Kiev and the regions.
Energy expert Oleksiy Khabatyuk noted that Ukraine only this year crawled out of a two-year recession and the prospects for future growth were minimal because of endless political upheaval and tensions with Russia.
"The instability that we see in our economy, in our political life and the military threat -- none of these things stimulate the attraction of investments," Khabatyuk said. "The overall investment climate is not attractive."

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FBR awaits Dar’s nod to implement new plan

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is awaiting Finance Minister Ishaq Dar’s approval to implement a plan that would extend its reach to new districts besides restructuring its existing set-up in major cities, an FBR official told Dawn on Saturday.

The original plan has already been delayed by one month and now it is being implemented from Aug 1. The tax machinery expansion is believed to help increase the narrow tax base and generate maximum revenue for the national exchequer.

After the complete implementation of the plan, the FBR estimates that revenue collection will reach Rs7 trillion from the existing Rs3tr within the next three years. The number of people who are on the tax roll is also estimated to reach six million from the current 3.93m.

The cost of the implementation is estimated between Rs1.5 billion and Rs2bn. This amount is required to establish 11 new non-corporate chief commissionerates and 12 new independent corporate commissionerates.

The official said this is the first phase of the tax administration reforms, which will be extended to all areas after approval of the competent authority.

The new reforms revolve around the idea of separating corporate taxpayers from non-corporate ones, and judge the performance of the tax officers in terms of revenue collection and improving tax compliance.

In Karachi, the existing two large taxpayers units (LTUs) will continue to work on the basis of functional system, where dedicated officers will perform specific jobs of assessment, audit, recovery and appeal.

The existing regional tax office (RTO)-I in Karachi has been converted into a corporate RTO. All those corporate cases other than those in the existing LTUs were transferred to the RTO-I. The remaining RTO-II and RTO-III in Karachi were specified for non-corporate cases in Karachi.

The non-corporate offices will work on a circle-based system, in which the officer in charge will handle all the responsibilities, ranging from assessment to recovery of taxes in his/her area or circle of operation.

In Lahore, the LTU will continue to work on the same pattern. In the two RTOs in Lahore, the RTO-I was converted into a corporate one, while the RTO-II was dedicated for the non-corporate cases. The RTO was also extended to mufassil areas of the adjacent areas in Lahore division.

In Peshawar, the RTO was restructured by creating new zones. A dedicated commissionerate office was established for corporate cases of the city, while a commissionerate office was created for non-corporate cases. Two zones were created in Dera Ismail Khan and Mardan to cover the mufassil areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In the Rawalpindi RTO, a dedicated commissioner office was created for the corporate cases, while commissionerate offices were also established for non-corporate cases in the Rawalpindi city and mufassil areas of the division.

In the Multan RTO, cases for corporate and non-corporate were separated by creating a commissionerate for corporate and non-corporate zones.

The structural reforms in the field formations of the Inland Revenue wing of the FBR revolve around a three-tier system — LTUs, corporate zones and mufassil commercial zones.

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Terror case against two for hate posts on Facebook

TOBA TEK SINGH: City police registered a case on Saturday under the Anti-Terrorism Act against two persons for uploading alleged hate posts on a social media site.

Complainant Mateeullah, of Chak 295-GB, says Rozi Khan, of Azafiabadi in Chak 331-JB, and Muhammad Nadeem Gul Qadri posted objectionable contents on their Facebook pages targeting a religious school of thought.

Police have yet to make arrests in the case.

CASES: A bank branch manager, a private hospital owner and three businessmen were booked on Saturday under Section 14 of the Security Vulnerable Establishment Ordinance of 2015 for their failure to adopt proper security measures to safeguard their business places.

Rajana police registered a case against bank manager Umer Hayat, while Kamalia city police against private hospital owner Dr Kamran Salim.

Toba City police registered cases against the owners of a wholesale grocery shop of the grain market, a cloth shop of Talab Bazaar and a cloth and garments store of Saddar bazaar.

No arrest has been made.

INJURED: International kabaddi player and Pakistan Army’s kabaddi coach Muhammad Irshad Shadda was seriously injured on Saturday in an attempt to restrain two brothers of his village from fighting.

Gojra Saddar police said brothers Abdul Hammed and Abdul Majeed were scuffling with each other outside their house in Chak 154-GB when Mr Shadda tried to intervene.

In the meantime, Zulfiqar Ali, son of Majeed, opened indiscriminate fire leaving Mr Shadda injured. He was rushed to the Gojra Tehsil Headquarters Hospital to be referred to the Faisalabad Allied hospital.

Scores of Kabaddi players visited the hospital. Police are raiding to arrest the accused.

LOOTED: A woman along with her three accomplices took away Rs1.2 million from a resident of Pattoki on Saturday in Gojra.

Police said Zafar Iqbal had come to Gojra with his three friends to buy a car. On Gojra-Toba Road near Chak 301-JB, a woman signalled for a lift. When Mr Iqbal stopped the car, her three accomplices, who were hidden in roadside bushes, came out and snatched Rs1.2 million, mobile phone sets and other valuables from them and fled.

DEMO: Scores of residents of Chah Sikandarwala staged a protest demonstration on Saturday over the failure of Kamalia Saddar police to arrest kidnappers and killers of a man of the locality.

Protesters told reporters that 40-year-old Manzoor Ahmad was kidnapped more than a week ago and his body was found tied with an electricity pole on Thursday.

They said despite the registration of a case, police were reluctant to trace and arrest the accused persons.

Kamalia Saddar Station House Officer Malik Akbar Hayat said a special team consisting of expert police officials was probing the case and soon the killers would be arrested.

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Footprints: Gotta catch ‘em all

KARACHI: Never thought I’d see a Diglett pop up in a street off Karachi’s Abdullah Haroon Road on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. But then, you never know.

A Diglett is a brown Pokémon that seems to be mostly underground with just its head sticking out. It has beady black eyes, a pink nose and if it’s exposed to the sun, its blood will heat up and cause it to grow weak.

This is one of the 151 Pokémon characters that a group of students and professionals got together to catch via Pokémon Go on a Super Savari Express (SSE) tour led by two friends and medical students, Ibrahim Hassan and Ali Lari, along with Jehanzeb Salim. Pokémon Go is a free augmented reality game app which uses your GPS location to guide you to Pokémon, and Poké stops.

“It’s been two weeks since Pokémon Go came out,” says Hassan. “A friend of mine mentioned it at university and we decided to get it,” he explains, adding that once they downloaded the app, they spent the entire day catching Pokémon.

“Initially, when you download the app on your smartphone, you find Pokémon everywhere — your bed, the bathroom — but as you level up it gets harder,” he says.

Lari prefers to be called a Pokémon trainer. “This game is basically about walking about town. You need to get out and go places,” he says, adding that there are a lot of people in the city who are interested in the game. “We want to get people together and play the game in its true essence,” he elaborates, adding that he is a dentistry student who has been skipping school to catch Pokémon. “This game is for people to get out, walk about — and you can’t do that here without a group of people.”

This is what the friends are trying to accomplish with the SSE tour every Saturday that costs Rs1,500.

“The game hasn’t launched here [in Pakistan] officially, so it’s not available on the App Store as yet,” Lari explains. “But if you’re an iPhone user, you can use your friends’, cousins’ or someone’s US iTunes account or change the region of your store to the US to download the app as it’s free.” For Android users, he adds, it’s much easier, as there is an app called APK: “Download that app and it will help you download the game. There are a lot of people in Pakistan who are sharing their username with others so they can join in on the fun.”

Salim, a veteran SSE guide, explains that they decided to take on this tour as it fit in with their concept: “This is to take people out to see their city,” he says, adding that SSE is the first guided tour of Karachi and offers people a platform to get to know the city together.

After catching Diglett, we go to Kabootar Chowk near the Sindh Assembly building. On the way there, the guides tell everyone on the bus to swipe left when they spot Poké stops or tap when they see a Pokémon. From there, we head to Frere Hall, Bin Qasim Park and Sea View beach.

“There’s a Charmander (a Pokémon character) in the area! Everyone, there’s a CHARMANDER HERE,” shout Taha Akram and Rameez, who are sitting in the front of the bus. The former, a medicine student, says he started playing Pokémon Go on July 8 and is addicted. So far, he has caught more than 400 Pokémon of 72 different types.

“The most important thing is combat points,” he explains. “The higher the combat points, the stronger your Pokémon,” adding that in the game there are three teams — Mystic (blue), Valour (red) and Instinct (yellow). “You exchange Pokémon for stuff which helps you power up and evolve your Pokémon.” At Poké stops, he adds, you can get Poké balls, eggs and potions to heal Pokémon.

While trying to understand how this game works, I miss the opportunity to catch two rare Pokémon. However, I do end up with Wild Cubone, Doduo, Growlithe, Onix, Sandshrew, Ekans and Charmander.

How does one attract more Pokémon, I ask the guides. According to Hassan, you can use lure modules, which help attract rare Pokémon. It seems you can either buy it or level up. Alternatively, this can also be done using incense, another potion.

Shaharyar Khan, who runs a startup website for homecooks, tells me: “Since we’re in Pakistan, I think we get more ground type Pokémon that can be found in arid climates, like Sandshrew etc.”

Zoha, who started playing the game last week, complains that she is always out of Poké balls. While the guides had warned us to not waste more than three balls on a Pokémon, Zoha said that she kept trying to catch the Pokémon and missed because they kept bouncing.

Sami, 12, says that he caught 32 Pokémon while Zy, 13, said he caught 42 and enjoyed searching for Pokémon while getting to know the city’s historical sites.

Towards the end of the tour, one of the guides turns to Akram, who is complaining that he hadn’t caught as many Pokémon as he thought he would: “Kya baat hai boy, are you gonna catch ‘em all today?”

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BlackBerry unveils second, cheaper, Android device

TORONTO: BlackBerry Ltd unveiled a second Android-based handset on Tuesday, a device combining Alphabet Inc's popular software and broad app catalog with the Canadian company's security and productivity features at a lower price.

The faded smartphone pioneer is hoping the DTEK50 will sell in greater numbers than the Priv, its first phone using the Android operating system, which Chief Executive John Chen has said suffered because of its high price.

The company said the 5.2-inch touchscreen-only DTEK50 is available from Tuesday for pre-order from BlackBerry's online shop in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands for $299. It plans to begin shipping the device on August 8.

“This is a good marriage of proposition and price point for enterprises,” said John Jackson, an analyst at International Data Corp.

Shares in the Waterloo, Ontario-based company were up 1.4 per cent at $7.18 on the Nasdaq and rose 1.6pc to C$9.50 in Toronto.

At its November launch the Priv, which features a slide out keyboard, cost $699 without a contract in the United States and C$899 without a contract in Canada. The company trimmed the Priv's price in April.

Calling the DTEK50 “the world's most secure Android smartphone”, BlackBerry said it will alert users if someone is making remote use of its camera or microphone, or accessing the phone's location information.

BlackBerry did not announce any distribution deals with major US carriers, with initial US sales instead expected to come mostly via Best Buy Co Inc, Amazon.com Inc and BlackBerry's own online store. Canada's biggest wireless carriers will all sell the device.

“The lack of specific detail on operator channels outside Canada says that there's still no path to massive volumes,” IDC's Jackson added.

BlackBerry recognised sales of roughly 500,000 devices in the three months to the end of May, down from some 1.1 million a year earlier as demand for its aging product portfolio sunk.

Once a dominant force in smartphones, BlackBerry now holds just a sliver of the global smartphone market. Earlier this month it said it would cease production of its Classic handset, which uses its own BlackBerry 10 operating system.

Chen last month expressed confidence the company's trimmed-down handset business can turn a profit by a self-imposed September deadline, even as some analysts urge the company to ditch the unit.

A third Android device is expected from BlackBerry in the coming months.

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Confusion over capital gains tax fate hitting both govt and realtors

GUJRAT: The ambiguity over the fate of the Capital Gain Tax (CGT) imposed by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on the sale and purchase of the properties, was causing a sharp decline in the revenue the provincial government and tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) would earn through taxes on such transactions and real estate business.

According to sources, the FBR move has brought to a grinding halt the routine business at the registration branches as well as computerised land record centers (CLRCs) in the three tehsils of the district for the last three weeks.

Since the FBR on July 1st had notified the imposition of 10 per cent CGT on the 100pc market price of any property sold within five years of the purchase to generate revenue from realtors, after the measure was introduced in the recent budget, both the seller and purchaser have been avoiding to get properties ownerships transferred, causing a sharp decline in the real estate business as well as government revenue.

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Few property mutations in Gujrat since FBR measure

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Previously the CGT was being charged as per the property evaluation table notified by the district collectors (DCs). The rates of property in the official evaluation table are usually 40pc-60pc lower than the actual market price.

However, in case of Gujrat city and its suburbs, in most of the commercial and some residential areas the property rates in the DC’s evaluation table are much higher than the actual market price.

According to the local real estate agents association, that was already struggling for lowering of these rates, the FBR measure could prove disastrous for their business.

Gujrat is also among the 18 districts which where the real estate associations have demanded the FBR should bring down the ratio of collecting CGT, instead of charging it on 100pc market price of property. They had proposed that if necessary the tax should be enhanced gradually so that their business could survive.

A senior official at the local land revenue department told Dawn that in the first two weeks of July, the registry branches as well as the CLRCs witnessed “zero activity” in terms of mutation of property due to the FBR’s decision.

Even, in the last one week (from 17 to 24 July) only three to four mutations were witnessed per day, he said, adding that before the FBR move there used to be around more than two dozen mutations a day in Gujrat and Kharian tehsils of the district.

He apprehended that if the situation persisted, the provincial government as well as the TMAs could face huge losses in terms of revenue, making it hard for them to achieve their respective revenue targets under this head.

According to him, only Gujrat TMA used to generate around Rs160 million annually, spending the sum on the provision of basic amenities to the citizens.

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Gold slips

LONDON: Gold fell on Monday as the dollar firmed and a recovery in risk appetite supported world stock markets near nine-month highs ahead of central bank meetings in the United States and Japan.

Spot gold was down 0.7 per cent at $1,313.96 an ounce at 1400 GMT, while US gold futures for August delivery were down $9.90 an ounce at $1,313.50.

Silver, which fell about 3pc last week, was down 1.1pc at $19.37. Platinum was 0.5 pc lower at $1,071.60 an ounce. Palladium, which hit a near nine-month high on Friday, was down 0.1pc at $679.45.

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Verizon buys Yahoo for $4.83bn, marking end of an era

SAN FRANCISCO: Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.83 billion, marking the end of an era for a company that once defined the internet.

It is the second time in as many years that Verizon has snapped up the remnants of a fallen internet star as it broadens its digital reach. United State's largest wireless carrier paid $4.4 billion for AOL last year.

Yahoo will be rolled into Verizon's AOL operations and CEO Marissa Mayer may be reunited with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, who worked with her as executives at Google for years and tried unsuccessfully to convince her to combine the two companies when they both remained independent.

"We have enormous respect for what Yahoo has accomplished: this transaction is about unleashing Yahoo's full potential," Armstrong said in a statement.

Most analysts expect the deal to end the four-year reign of Yahoo's Mayer, a former Google executive who flopped in her attempts to turn around the Sunnyvale, California, company.

Mayer, though, told employees in a Monday email that she intends to stay, though she didn't say for how long. "I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you. It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter," she wrote.

Yahoo Inc., Sunnyvale, California, is parting with its email service and still-popular websites devoted to news, finance and sports in addition to its advertising tools under pressure from shareholders fed up with a steep downturn in the company's revenue during the past eight years.

The slump has been deepening even though advertisers have been pouring more money into what is now a $160 billion market for digital advertising, according to research firm eMarketer.

Most of the money has been flowing to internet search leader Google and internet social networking leader Facebook, two companies that eclipsed Yahoo during its slide from an online sensation, once valued at $130 billion, to a dysfunctional also ran.

After the sale is completed early next year, Yahoo will become a holding company for its two stakes in China's e-commerce leader, Alibaba Group, and Yahoo Japan. Those investments, made more than a decade ago, are worth more than $40 billion before taxes, making them by far the most valuable pieces of Yahoo. The holding company will drop the Yahoo name and adopt a new identify after Verizon takes control of the operating business.

Yahoo also still has a patent portfolio that it intends to sell, and about $7.7 billion in cash. Verizon is buying Yahoo's real estate, along with the online operations.

Yahoo has hired a succession of CEOs to engineer a comeback, but finally gave up after the high hopes that accompanied Mayer's hiring fizzled out.

The sale potentially could result in thousands of layoffs. Mayer has already jettisoned 1,900 Yahoo workers since last September.

If Mayer leaves following the sale, she will be in line to receive a severance package valued at $55 million.

As people began to flock to the internet with the advent of graphical web browsers in the 1990s, Yahoo was king. After co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo began building a web directory as Stanford University computer graduate students in 1994, Yahoo quickly established itself as the online hub for tens of millions of people. It also proved internet companies could be profitable as other dot-com startups burned through millions of dollars.

But Yahoo strayed from internet search in an attempt to build a multimedia business, opening the door for Google become a powerhouse. It didn't recognize the importance of social networking and was slow to make the leap into mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Instead, Yahoo tried to buy Google and Facebook in those companies' formative years, but it was rebuffed and then dwarfed by them.

Mayer believes Yahoo can still come back now it it's about to join a bigger company in Verizon. "Yahoo is a company that changed the world and will continue to do so," she said during a Monday conference call with analysts.

Despite Yahoo's troubles, its operations are attractive to Verizon because the wireless carrier is looking to capitalize on the growing number of people living their digital lives on smartphones. Verizon already profits from the data plans that connect more than 100 million people using those devices to the internet; with AOL and Yahoo's services, Verizon is now looking to control more of the advertising experience on phones instead of surrendering control to Google and Facebook.

If Verizon fully owned Yahoo right now, it would generate about $3.6 billion in U.S. ad revenue this year to eclipse Microsoft for third place in the market, based on eMarketer's estimates. It would still be far behind in ad revenue, compared with Google's projected $27 billion, and Facebook's projected $10 billion.

AOL is best known for the dial-up internet it popularized in the '90s and owns popular media sites like Huffington Post and TechCrunch, but Verizon primarily wanted its ad technology.

While Verizon also wants Yahoo's ad services, it is also prizes the hordes that still regularly visit to pick up their email, check the weather and catch up on current events, celebrity gossip and the stock market. The company is hoping to have a mobile audience of 2 billion people by 2020, with a goal of $20 billion in mobile revenue by that time.

Yahoo says it has more than 1 billion users, though Outsell analyst Randy Giusto believes only about 200 million are habitual visitors.

"It's the eyeballs that generate the advertising, you have to get to that viewership to get the advertisers to advertise, and that's the model that we have to follow," said Verizon CFO Francis Shammo at an investment conference in May in response to a question about Yahoo's appeal.

Given Verizon already owns AOL, Giusto says Verizon is probably the best fit for Yahoo instead of the other suitors, which also included private equity firms that specialize in buying distressed companies and trying to rehabilitate them.

The deal, expected to close within the first three months of next year, still needs approval from Yahoo shareholders.

Yahoo's stock fell slightly at the open of trade Monday.

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