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February 16, 2022: National Current Affairs MCQs
1. Dar tables mini-budget to unlock IMF funding
• Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on February 15, 2023 tabled the Finance (Supplementary) Bill, 2023, in both houses of the parliament, outlining tax measures to raise an additional Rs170 billion in the next four and half months to meet the last prior actions agreed upon with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to secure early disbursement of about $1.2bn instalment.
• Two measures raising the federal excise duty (FED) on cigarettes and increasing the general sales tax (GST) rate from 17 per cent to 18pc have been immediately implemented through statutory regulatory orders (SROs). The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) expects to generate Rs115bn from these two measures.
• The finance bill, generally known as the mini-budget, also proposes increasing GST from 17pc to 25pc on 33 categories of goods covering 860 tariff lines including high-end mobile phones, imported food, decoration items, and other luxury goods
2. Caretakers suspend notifications for Gujrat division, other entities creation
• The caretaker Punjab government, in an unprecedented move, suspended the notifications issued for the creation of a new division, four new districts and two tehsils in the province, inviting a volley of questions, ranging from its jurisdiction to intentions behind the decision.
• The caretaker government on February 15, 2023 suspended the notifications for creation of the new administrative division of Gujrat, districts of Murree, Wazirabad, Talagang and Kot Addu, besides Jalalpur Jattan and Kunjah tehsils, till the holding of general elections in the province.
• Senior Member Board of Revenue (SMBR) Nabeel Javed has issued the suspension notifications in pursuance of the provincial cabinet`s decision taken in its meeting on Feb 9.
3. Moody`s sees inflation averaging 33pc in 1HCY23
• Inflation in Pakistan could average 33 per cent in the first half of 2023 before trending lower, and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund alone is unlikely to put the economy back on track, a senior economist with Moody`s Analytics told Reuters.
• `Our view is that an IMF bailout alone isn`t going to be enough to get the economy back on track. What the economy really needs is persistent and sound economic management,` senior economist Katrina Ell said in an interview on Wednesday.
• `There`s still an inevitably tough journey ahead. We`re expecting fiscal and monetary austerity to continue well into 2024,` she added
February 16, 2022: International Current Affairs MCQs
4. Afghan Taliban `unlikely to stop support for TTP`
• Afghanistan`s Taliban rulers are unlikely to discontinue supporting militants in Pakistan as they feel that economic troubles prevent Islamabad from launching a major operation against the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), according to a new report from a leading US think tank.
• `Amid Pakistan`s economic crisis and the Taliban`s rule in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban have reemerged as an increasingly potent threat,` warned the report, released in Washington on Tuesday by the US Institute of Peace (USIP).
5. India to raise seven new battalions for China border
• India will raise seven new battalions of the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) in the next few years, a minister said on February 15, 2023, amid tensions with neighbour China that led to deadly borderclashesin2020and scuffles late last year.
• The undemarcated 3,800-km frontier between the nuclear-armed countries stayed largely peaceful since a war in 1962, before the clashes nearly three years ago sent relations nosediving.
• The ITBP primarily guards the India-China border, stretching from the Karakoram Pass in Ladakh in India`s north to Jachep La in Arunachal Pradesh state in the east.
• Indian and Chinese troops have been involved in hand-to-hand clashes at some areas of the frontier in the past few years
