Category: 3. Business

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is working on a strategy to streamline and simplify digital payment systems for merchants. The initiative aims to introduce an easy-to-use package designed to encourage small businesses to adopt digital payment methods.

This was revealed during a high-level weekly meeting on cashless and digital economy at the Prime Minister’s House on Thursday.

On the occasion, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif emphasised the need to facilitate payments between citizens and businesses and to raise awareness about the use of digital systems. He stressed to implement the digital transaction system across the country saying it was vital to bring transparency to the economy.

The premier instructed the committees formed for the cashless economy to work closely with all stakeholders to present doable recommendations.

During the meeting, the prime minister was briefed that following the previous meeting, the Digital Payments Innovation and Adoption Committee, the Digital Public Infrastructure Committee, and the Government Payments Committee had been established.

A detailed briefing was given with respect to the committees’ proposals and strategies regarding the digitization of the economy.

It was informed that the State Bank of Pakistan was developing a strategy to simplify and ease digital payment methods for merchants. The target is to increase the number of mobile app users for digital payments from 95 million to 120 million, and the number of merchants using QR codes will be increased from 0.9 million to 2 million.

The total volume of digital payments is aimed to increase from Rs 7.5 billion to Rs 12 billion. 

The prime minister directed that all these targets should be doubled.

The meeting was further informed that the “Digital National Pakistan” project for the digital economy had been initiated. The Islamabad City mobile application has so far recorded 1.3 million downloads, offering 15 services.

Through the Islamabad City App, Rs 15.5 billion has been collected under ICT Excise and Taxation, the meeting was informed.

Work is progressing rapidly on the completion of the Digital Pakistan ID project, while E-stamping facilities will also be launched in Islamabad soon.

The meeting was further informed that efforts were underway to provide Wi-Fi internet services across Islamabad, particularly in hospitals, educational institutions, government offices, parks, and metro bus lines.

The prime minister instructed that all these facilities should also be introduced in all federal areas, Azad Jammu & Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The meeting was attended by Minister for Information Technology and Telecom Shaza Fatima, Minister for Petroleum Ali Pervaiz Malik, Prime Minister’s Advisor Dr. Tauqir Shah, Minister of State for Finance and Railways Bilal Azhar Kayani, and other senior government officials.

In May 2025, the average price of transport services (services related to the transportation of individuals in various forms, including by railway, road, air, sea and inland waterways) in the EU was 1.7% higher than in May 2024.  The prices of passenger transport by railway and road were up by 4.0% and 2.3%, respectively, while air transport prices were down by 3.0%. 

Between May 2023 and May 2025, inflation for transport services saw moderate fluctuations. It started at +3.9% in May 2023, reached +11.9% in June 2023, then declined steadily and reached negative rates in late 2023 and early 2024. By August 2024, the annual rate of change rose to +3.5% and stayed at similar levels in the following months, peaking again in April 2025 (+7.3%). 

Prices for passenger transport by railway were more stable than the overall transport services, maintaining annual rate changes between +0.8% and +5.7%. Similarly, passenger transport by road showed rate changes between +1.2% and +4.5%. 

Source dataset: prc_hicp_manr

Air transport prices were the most volatile, reflecting travel demand and seasonality. In May 2023, prices were 18.4% higher than in May 2022. The rate dropped considerably to -5.3% by November 2023, then fluctuated throughout the following months. In November 2024, inflation for air transport increased to 10.0%, and in April 2025, it was +13.8%.

In May 2025, among EU countries, the highest annual inflation for transport services was recorded in Malta (+19.0%), Slovakia (+14.2%), and Luxembourg (+12.7%). Inflation rates for transport services declined in 7 EU countries, most notably in Cyprus (-9.4%), Ireland (-9.2%), and the Netherlands (-4.9%). 

Source dataset: prc_hicp_manr

The U.S. economy continues to send mixed signals. On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will report job figures for June that may help clear up the picture.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal forecast that 110,000 new payrolls were added in June. That would be the fewest since February, and it would be the fourth monthly decline in the past six months. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, was expected to have climbed to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021.

Consumers and businesses are still grappling with the uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s policies, something further reflected in volatile data.

On one hand, the inflation rate has so far proven stable, while average earnings continue to grow at a healthy clip. Stocks have returned to all-time highs, and in testimony last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell described overall economic conditions as “solid.”

“Look at labor force participation, look at wages, look at job creation,” Powell said. “They’re all at healthy levels now. I would say you can see perhaps a very, very slow continued cooling but nothing that’s troubling at this time.”

On the other hand, Powell’s assertions have not sat well with Trump, who has continued to harangue him to lower the federal interest rate. On Wednesday evening, the president said Powell should “resign immediately.”

Commentary from U.S. firms and various other data points paint a more worrisome portrait of the economy. The latest survey of manufacturers from the Institute for Supply Chain Management found some firms describing the business environment as “hellacious” and “too volatile” for long-term procurement decisions.

On Wednesday, the private payrolls processor ADP reported a net decline in jobs added, which hasn’t occurred since March 2023 — and before that, the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic. The May job growth figure was revised even lower, to just 29,000 jobs added, from 37,000.

“Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,” Nela Richardson, ADP’s chief economist, said in a news release published Wednesday morning.

Clarity about tariffs was supposed to have arrived by next week, with Trump having set July 9 as the deadline to negotiate new deals. While he said this week he does not plan to extend the deadline, the White House said last week that the key date was “not critical.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s tax cut and spending bill continues to be debated in Congress even as it has cleared some key hurdles.

“Companies need business visibility in taxes and policy if they are going to take the risk of hiring a new employee,” Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Financial Group, wrote in a note to clients. “And tariffs, on again/off again, have just thrown mud into the gears of business activity.”

The ADP report has a mixed track record of predicting the official BLS figure, which is usually published a day or two later. Earlier in the week, the BLS reported data showing a somewhat more sound picture of the job market, with job openings having unexpectedly increased in June.

Yet, even then, the bulk of those openings were in the leisure and hospitality sector, while openings declined in manufacturing and professional and business services.

“The leisure/hospitality sector alone cannot support the labor market amidst a broader weakening,” analysts with Citi Research wrote in a note to clients.

An additional hiring report released this week by the job consultancy Challenger, Gray and Christmas showed that through June, U.S. employers have announced 82,932 planned hires, a 19% increase over the 69,920 announced at this point in 2024.

Yet that rate remains historically low, it said.

“Hiring announcements in 2025 suggest a cautious but stabilizing labor market,” firm Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger said in a release. “While companies are clearly adding workers at a higher rate than in 2024, the restraint shown relative to previous years indicates continued uncertainty around costs, automation, and the broader economic outlook. Without a strong economic driver, hiring may remain measured through the rest of the year.”

CNN
 — 

Electric vehicles are a common sight on roads across the world — but not everywhere.

In Saudi Arabia, electric vehicles (EVs) account for just over 1% of overall car sales, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) “eMobility Outlook 2024: KSA Edition,” published in September 2024. Globally, about 18% of all cars sold in 2023 were electric, according to the International Energy Agency.

There are several roadblocks to the rollout of cleaner cars in the desert kingdom, but things are changing quickly.

The Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Company (EVIQ) is at the forefront of that transformation. EVIQ was founded in late 2023 as a joint venture between the country’s sovereign wealth fund — the Public Investment Fund (PIF) — and Saudi Electricity Company.

By the end of 2023, there were around 285 public charging points in the country, according to the PwC report, mostly slow chargers. In January 2024, EVIQ opened its first fast charging station in the country’s capital, Riyadh. By 2030, it plans to have 5,000 fast chargers installed across 1,000 locations.

“Very few people are willing to buy an electric vehicle without having the comfort of seeing infrastructure being available,” EVIQ CEO Mohammad Gazzaz, told CNN. “We’re paving the way.”

Today, EVs are mostly purchased by people that “can charge at home with their private wall boxes,” said Heiko Seitz, Global eMobility Leader, PwC Middle East, and an author of the eMobility report.

A lack of charging stations isn’t the only reason for the slow uptake of EVs in Saudi. In 2024 more than 60% of models available cost more than $65,000, according to PwC’s report, while nearly 73% of gasoline-powered models cost less than that. Generous fuel subsidies mean a liter of gasoline, about a quarter of a gallon, currently costs Saudi drivers around 60 cents.

EV batteries can struggle with the temperatures typical of a Saudi summer, and the additional energy needed for cooling them can significantly impact their charging speed and range. And the country is vast — just over a fifth of the size of the US — with the distance between its two largest cities more than 950 kilometers (almost 600 miles), longer than the average range of most EVs.

But the country has ambitious plans for reducing its dependence on oil revenues and its carbon emissions. Oil accounted for 60% of government revenue in 2024, with crude oil and natural gas accounting for more than 20% of the country’s GDP over the same period.

It wants 30% of the cars in its capital Riyadh to be electric by 2030. But Saudi isn’t just adopting EVs, it’s “building an entire industrial ecosystem” around them, said Seitz. The country is embracing “eMobility as a strategic lever to decarbonize, diversify its economy, and localize manufacturing at scale.”

That includes plans to become an EV manufacturing hub. PIF is the largest shareholder in the US-automaker Lucid, which in 2023 opened the first car manufacturing facility in the country.

CEER, a joint venture between PIF and the Taiwanese company Foxconn, plans to launch its first Saudi-produced EV by 2026. And a joint venture between PIF and Hyundai has broken ground on a manufacturing plant in the country.

Major EV producers are now selling in the country. China’s BYD opened its first showroom there in May 2024, and in April, Tesla launched in Saudi Arabia.

Seitz said the introduction of Chinese models is likely to help drive prices down. BYD’s Saudi website lists its Atto 3 model with a starting price of approximately $27,000.

More than 40% of Saudi consumers are considering purchasing an EV in the next three years, according to PwC.

Today, there are EVIQ chargers in Riyadh and Jeddah. In April, the company rolled out its first highway EV charging station. “It’s still really foundational work,” said Gazzaz.

He said that EVIQ is targeting 50 to 60 new charging sites this year, including in smaller cities like Mecca and Medina. By the end of 2026, Gazzaz anticipates that the country will have a “minimum viable network.”

“We’re not talking only tier-one, but even tier-two cities, and covering some of those main highways,” he said. “Ultimately we’re trying to cover about 70 to 80% of travel requirements across the Kingdom by 2026.”

Gazzaz declined to share how much would need to be invested to reach the targets.

Seitz said that the country’s official target of 30% electric cars in Riyadh is likely to be met, but that “an additional push” might be required to make EVs a mass product for the entire country.

A survey published in May 2024 by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, and University College London, concluded that large-scale uptake of EVs in Riyadh would likely require the government to introduce financial incentives such as VAT exemption for new vehicles, subsidized charging, and free installation of home chargers, “at least in early stages of deployment.”

The government says it has introduced some financial incentives and subsidies for EV buyers.

Better infrastructure will help push forward the country’s EV revolution, experts say.

“EV prices are falling, model options are growing, and government signals are clear — yet range anxiety remains,” said Seitz. “Public charging is the main gap, and it’s now a top priority to fix.”

Chinese AI app DeepSeek could be facing another ban, this time in Germany. Data protection official Meike Kamp has filed a formal request with both Apple and Google to remove DeepSeek from digital storefronts.

Kamp, the Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, has accused the app of sending personal data to China, a violation of European Union law.

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has released a free to use Resilience Maturity Assessment (ReMA) tool[1] to evaluate and enhance organizations’ capacity to withstand disruptions and adapt to change.

The assessment tool was developed by UNDRR and the Corporate Chief Resilience Officers (CCRO) network through consultations with a diverse range of stakeholders. It features a straightforward, checkbox-style assessment that benchmarks resilience maturity across six core pillars of resilience, and offers targeted improvement guidance, including practical templates and resources to support enhancement efforts.

The assessment’s six pillars of resilience are policy and governance, leadership and culture, organization, capacity, operating model, and value chain. Practitioners are asked up to three questions on each pillar, for example, value chain measures the ability to meet client obligations and supply chain resilience. Final scores are measured on 1-4 basis, and scores falling short of full marks offer suggestions to improve. For example, a supply chain level 3 score produced recommendations including ‘Consider the risks and cost benefits/drawbacks of diverse suppliers against single suppliers with better pricing’.​

Alongside the guidance, relevant templates are included to support and enhance implementation, as well as benchmarking against specific sectors or regulations for meaningful measurements that are scalable across industries.

The ReMA tool is particularly valuable given that BCI research[2] shows one-third of organizations (33.3%) do not use any specific performance indicators to measure resilience. This highlights the current challenges in standardising resilience measurement and the need for more effective, data-informed approaches.

The Resilience Framework 1.0

Last year the BCI released the Resilience Framework 1.0, a strategic guidance and framework cycle that organizations can use to ensure resilience is strategically led, clearly defined, and aligned with an organization’s realities for long-term effectiveness. It is aimed at top leadership and based on guiding fundamental concepts in the form of eight core principles, with a cycle to help implement them in a structured way,

The Resilience Framework and the UNDRR’s ReMA are grounded in the same principles. Both emphasise the importance of leadership, clear direction, comprehensive understanding, collaboration, strategic planning, adaptability, and continuous improvement in building resilience. The Resilience Framework serves as an in-depth strategic resource for leadership, while the ReMA resource is designed with a more practical, operational approach focused on measuring and enhancing resilience within operational environments.

As global resilience tools, both are designed for repeated use and offer structured support to professionals working to strengthen resilience and, with research showing global operational resilience programmes have increased 10% on last year[3], the need for good quality guidance is clear.  Used together, these tools can enhance resilience programmes from strategic leadership to boots-on-the-ground implementation.

Advocating for globally relevant resources

The BCI is an advocate for innovative, globally relevant tools that organizations of all sizes, sectors, and locations can use to assess, measure, and strengthen their resilience. Building resilience is a continuous endeavour, and tools such as ReMA play a vital role in guiding organizations as they strengthen and adapt over time, developing their resilience capabilities and responding effectively to emerging risks in the disruptive environment of evolving global change.

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