Rawalpindi: Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa Wednesday said Pakistan valued China's role in regional and global affairs.

According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Director of China's Central Committee for Foreign Affairs, Mr Yang Chichi called on the Army Chief and discussed defense cooperation, progress on CPEC and security in the region.

During the meeting, the Army Chief said Pakistan valued ​​China's role in regional and global affairs and was keen to enhance strategic partnership with China.

Mr Yang Chichi thanked General Bajwa for taking steps to provide a safe environment for Chinese personnel deployed on various projects in Pakistan.

Bringing down high inflation around the world will be painful and could even crash growth but must be done quickly to prevent rapid price growth from becoming entrenched, the world's top central bank chiefs said on Wednesday.

Inflation is breaking multi-decade highs around the world as soaring energy prices, post-pandemic supply chain bottlenecks and in some cases red-hot labour markets are pushing up the cost of everything, and threatening to set off a hard-to-break wage-price spiral.

"The process is highly likely to involve some pain but the worst pain would be from failing to address this high inflation and allowing it to become persistent," U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said at the European Central Bank's annual conference in Sintra, Portugal.

Echoing Powell's words, ECB President Christine Lagarde said the low inflation of the pre-pandemic era would not return and that the ECB, which has persistently underestimated price growth, had to act now because price growth was likely to remain above the 2% target for years to come.

RISKS

Engineering policy tightening to avoid a recession in the United States is certainly possible, Powell said, adding that the pathway was narrow and there were no guarantees of success.

"Is there a risk that we would go too far? Certainly there's a risk, but I wouldn’t agree that it's the biggest risk to the economy," he said. "The bigger mistake to make, let's put it that way, would be to fail to restore price stability."

Augustin Carstens, the General Manager at the Bank for International Settlements, an umbrella group of central banks, said policymakers had taken the first step in recognising they had a problem. Now their job was to tighten policy, as risks were mounting.

"They should try to... prevent the full transition from a low inflation environment to a high inflation environment where this high inflation gets entrenched," Carstens told the ECB gathering. "You need to prevent this vicious cycle from kicking in."

The ECB has already flagged rate hikes in both July and September while the Fed increased rates by 0.75 percentage points in June and may opt for a similar move in July.

The Bank of England raised rates by 25 basis points to 1.25% this month - its fifth successive move -and said it would act "more forcefully" in the future if it saw a greater persistence of inflation.

"There will be circumstances in which we will have to do more," BoE Governor Andrew Bailey told the conference. "We're not there yet in terms of the next meeting. We're still a month away, but that's on the table."

"But you shouldn't assume it's the only thing on the table," he said, referring to another 25 basis point hike.

However, Bailey also warned that the British economy was now clearly at a turning point and starting to slow.

SOURCE: REUTERS

Lahore: The operations police have arrested its own Station House Officer for booking a citizen in a fake narcotics case. 

Harbanspura SHO Safdar Sajjad was arrested on the orders of DIG Operations Captain (retired) Muhammad Sohail Chuahdry who ordered to register a case against him.

The SI was found guilty of abettting one party in land dispute during the investigation of the SSP Investigations.

According to DIG Operations, no police officer has the right to oppress the common man and involve him/her in false cases.

"Corruption and abuse of power will not be tolerated at all," he made it clear.

Sohail further said the officers supporting the land grabbers don't deserve any concession.