ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s average inflation is expected to remain in the 5.5-7.5% range in the fiscal year ending June 2025, the country’s central bank said in its half-yearly economic report this week, stating that its real GDP growth is expected to hover between 2.5-3.5%.

Pakistan’s economy has improved in recent months, supported by declining inflation, which caused the central bank to reduce its policy rate to 12% after a series of cuts totaling 1,000 basis points since June 2024.

In a report titled “The State of Pakistan’s Economy, Half Year Report FY25” released on Monday, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) noted that inflationary pressures have receded notably, with headline inflation reaching a multi-decade low of 0.7% by March 2025.

“In view of steeper-than-anticipated disinflation, combined with an adequately tight monetary policy stance, continued fiscal consolidation and an ease in global commodity prices, the SBP projects average inflation for FY25 to fall in the range of 5.5–7.5 percent,” the SBP said in a press release.

Pakistan’s inflation rate rose to a record high of 38% in May 2023 on account of surging food and fuel costs. This was caused by Islamabad’s move to withdraw energy and fuel subsidies under a deal agreed with the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a financial bailout package.

The report said Pakistan’s current account balance is projected to remain in the range of -0.5 to 0.5 percent of the GDP. The central bank said it expects a “strong momentum” in foreign remittances and exports to continue outpacing the increase in imports. 

“This is expected to cushion against lower financial inflows and help strengthen external buffers,” the report said. “The SBP’s projection for real GDP growth remains unchanged in the range of 2.5–3.5 percent.”

The report highlighted downside risks in the form of additional fiscal consolidation and less-than-expected wheat harvests. It pointed out risks to the medium-term outlook, largely stemming from global trade disruptions and related commodity price volatility in light of Washington’s tariffs, changing geo-political situations, adjustments in administered energy prices and spillover of movements in international currencies on the local currency. 

PARIS: Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a “live-streamed genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with “specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide.”
Israel has rejected accusations of “genocide” from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.
The conflict erupted after the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.
“Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide,” Amnesty’s secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.
“States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools,” she added.
Gaza’s civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons’ tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.
The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.
The lack of fuel “threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers,” it said in a statement.
Amnesty’s report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza “displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water.”
Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had “documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks.”
It said Israel’s actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza’s population, and “deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”
Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, “the world’s governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire.”
Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of “apartheid.”
“Israel’s system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians,” it said.
Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced “the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year” as well as “the world’s complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it.”