CAIRO: The UAE’s non-oil trade hit 1.058 trillion dirhams ($288.06 billion) in the first half of 2022, up 17 percent from a year earlier, its vice president said on Monday in a tweet.
The Gulf country’s non-oil trade half-year topped 1 trillion dirhams for the first time, said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, who is also the ruler of Dubai.
Non-oil exports in the first half reached roughly 180 billion dirhams, up 8 percent, and accounted for about 17 percent of non-oil trade.
Pakistan central bank holds rates at 15%
Pakistan’s central bank on Monday held its main policy rate at 15 percent, the bank said in a statement, adding it would closely watch inflation data and global commodity prices.
“Looking ahead, the Monetary Policy Committee intends to remain data-dependent, paying close attention to month-on-month inflation ... as well as global commodity prices and interest rate decisions by major central banks,” the State Bank of Pakistan said in a statement.
The decision, which was largely in line with analysts’ expectations, came after the bank hiked rates by 125 basis points at its previous policy meeting in July as the country experienced surging inflation.
UK economy shrank 11% in 2020
Britain recorded its biggest fall in output in more than 300 years in 2020 when it faced the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a larger decline than any other major economy, updated official figures showed on Monday.
The gross domestic product fell by 11 percent in 2020, the Office for National Statistics said. This was a bigger drop than any of the ONS’s previous estimates and the largest fall since 1709, according to historical data hosted by the Bank of England.
British statisticians regularly update GDP estimates as more data becomes available.
The ONS’s initial estimates had already suggested that in 2020 Britain suffered its biggest fall in output since the “Great Frost” of 1709. But more recently the ONS had revised down the scale of the fall to 9.3 percent, the largest since just after WWI.
(With input from Reuters)
