BISINISS WORLD NEWS

ISLAMABAD: The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet Tuesday made it mandatory to produce national identity cards to get a pack of 2 kg sugar from the USC outlets.

The ECC met here under the chairmanship of Federal Minister for Finance Shaukat Tarin at the PM’s Secretariat.

This step has been taken to ensure affective monitoring and vigilance system at the USC outlets for sale of sugar.

The ECC decided that the Shell’s offer at 15% Brent + $ 0.50 per MMBTU, subject to further improvement in the final round of negotiations will be accepted for upto 1MTPA Medium Term supplies of 6 years and 2.5 MTPA from 7 to 20 years.

The ECC was told that the overall CPI-based inflation registered decrease of 0.49 percent in December 2009 over November, 2009.

The stock of wheat as on January 31, 2010 amounted to 5.9 million tons as against 1.7 million tons in the same period last year, thereby showing a higher stock of about 4.2 million tons compared with last year.

The meeting was informed that trade deficit improved by 29.0 percent to $ 7.0 billion in July-December 2009-10 from $ 10.0 billion in the same period last year.

The ECC noted that workers remittances amounted to $ 4,531.0 million in July-December 2009-10 as against $ 3,640.0 million, showing an increase of 25.0 percent over the same period last year.

The Foreign exchange reserves stood at $ 14.5 billion as on February 4, 2010 - up from $ 6.4 billion on November 25, 2008.

The provisional FBR tax collection stood at Rs.693.3 billion on net basis during July-January 2009-10 as compared to Rs.630.5 billion in the same period last year, thereby posting an increase of 10.0 percent.