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Rain and bad light hit the first Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka after pacer Saqib Khan took seven wickets on debut to lead the home team’s fightback on Thursday.

Saqib grabbed an impressive 7-130 on an overcast morning in Rawalpindi to spark a Sri Lankan collapse which saw the tourists slumping from their overnight 404-4 to 446 all out.

Pakistan, who conceded a slender first innings lead of 12 runs, were 57-1 when bad light and then rain stopped play 45 minutes into the second session.

Opener Azan Awais and Mohammad Taha were the unbeaten batters with 22 and 24 respectively, with the home team now leading by 45 runs with nine wickets intact.

Pakistan had lost opener Tayyab Arif just before lunch, skittled lbw by Asitha Fernando for 11.

With more rain forecast for Friday, the Test is heading for a draw, leaving the series result on the second and final match, also in Rawalpindi from November 17.

It was Saqib who shone in the overcast morning session.

He started the collapse in the first over of the day when he bagged the prize wicket of centurion Dhananjaya de Silva, caught behind by Ghazi Ghori without adding to his overnight 167.

De Silva hit 20 fours in a 405-minute marathon knock and was soon joined back in the pavilion by Sri Lanka captain Kusal Mendis, who had also reached his hundred on day three.

Kusal, who added 249 runs for the fifth wicket with De Silva, fell to Saqib for 119 in the fifth over after adding just two to his overnight score. He hit 10 fours and four sixes in five hours at the crease.

Sri Lanka lost their last six wickets for 42 runs and Saqib took his fifth when Sonal Dinusha (20) edged to slip.

Saqib then mopped up tail-enders Lahiru Kumara (0) and Asitha Fernando (four) to become only the fourth Pakistani to take seven wickets in an innings on debut.

The others were pace bowler Mohammad Zahid (7-66), off-spinner Mohammad Nazir (7-99) and leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed (7-114).

Source: dawn

THE State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has successfully rebuilt foreign exchange reserves over the last three years. Much of this success, however, has been purchased by drawing liquidity directly out of the forex market. It attributes its purchases to improved market liquidity and describes their purpose as strengthening external buffers and the capacity to meet external obligations. These are legitimate considerations. Yet the extent to which dollars have been siphoned from the market to accumulate reserves raises concerns for the wider economy.

When the central bank becomes a persistent and dominant buyer of dollars in the market, it effectively crowds out some private businesses, which must compete with an institution that enjoys an informational advantage. While Pakistan is familiar with the crowding out of the private sector through large and persistent government borrowing to finance budget deficits, crowding out in the foreign exchange market is unprecedented.

If the forex market has sufficient depth, it can smoothly accommodate both the central bank’s purchases and the private sector’s requirements. But where the market is constrained, the adjustment has to take place somewhere. It may appear in the exchange rate, transaction spreads, delays in opening letters of credit (LCs), or restrictions on access to foreign currency. In effect, private sector buyers are either priced out of the market or pushed into waiting queues.

There have been several media reports of import payment delays and dollar rationing by some banks. Concerns about these practices have also surfaced in official trade assessments. The US National Trade Estimate Report 2026, for instance, records stakeholder concerns about delays in banks’ issuance of LCs, reportedly resulting from informal SBP limitations on commercial banks’ borrowing of foreign currency through the interbank market. The report also highlights that corporations and foreign equity holders have encountered administrative delays, documentation hurdles, and informal queuing systems when seeking to repatriate their profits, dividends, and royalties in dollars.

The SBP must reassess its market interventions.

Such restrictions carry consequences. Central banking, in essence, is not an accounting exercise and balance sheet management. Every action has microeconomic and macroeconomic repercussions for resource allocation, business costs, investment decisions, and, ultimately, economic growth. Thus, a policy intended to strengthen the country’s external position can, paradoxically, undermine investors’ sentiments and the productive capacity to generate future foreign exchange.

A further paradox concerns the exchange rate signal. Despite extensive purchases, the exchange rate is not responding. Conventional macroeconomic models offer limited help in explaining such interventions. Instead, an exchange rate microstructure approach, built on order flow, may offer a better explanation of exchange rate determination. Order flow refers to the buying and selling pressure generated by market participants. This approach recognises the importance of participants’ identities, information and trading behaviour in influencing exchange rate movements. A study by Evans and Lyons, published in the Journal of Political Economy in 2002, shows that order flow has substantial explanatory power for exchange rate changes.

When a central bank, which also issues licences to the market participants, enters the market, its order flow may convey its preferences about price as well as quantity. Forex dealers, observing this institutional order flow, may adjust their quotes and inventory positi­ons accordingly. Consequently, the exchange rate may increasingly reflect the central bank’s institutional prefere­nces rather than the underlying balance of forex demand and supply.

Granular level data can explain forex dynamics on the basis of the order flow model. The SBP has both the technical capacity and the high-frequency data required for such analysis. It could examine import payment delays, outstanding foreign exchange requests, transaction spreads, interbank turnover, and the daily pattern of its own purchases. A range of forex market data is already covered by IMF monitoring and reporting requirements on a daily basis. Greater transparency and wider dissemination of this data may also allow independent researchers to apply an order flow model to exchange rate formation in Pakistan.

Reserve accumulation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for stability, which ultimately depends on the economy’s ability to generate foreign exchange through exports, investment, and productive activity. The SBP must, therefore, assess its market interventions within a robust analytical framework and develop an exit strategy for its dollar purchases for reserve accumulation.

The writer is an economist.

m.farooqarby@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2026

Source: dawn

LAHORE: Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi, sisters of incarcerated PTI founder Imran Khan, were released from Kot Lakhpat jail following the withdrawal of their extended detention orders, PTI legal counsel Rana Mudassar Umer told Dawn on Thursday.

In a post on X, he said the two — who were detained in September under the Punjab Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance (MPO) along with their sister Aleema Khan — had returned home “safely”.

PTI lawyer Taimur Malik also said on X that the two women had been released upon the withdrawal of the “unlawful MPO detention order”.

“Everyone else detained under these MPO orders should be released as well,” he said.

Noreen’s son, Wali, also said on X that his mother and his aunt had been released from jail.

“For 53 days they were held under Section 3 of the MPO. No charge. No trial. Two weeks ago, Noreen, in her seventies, was taken to a cardiac hospital. No one told us. Today they were let out. No reason given,” he said.

He called for a judge to “explain both decisions”, but added: “No one can, because neither decision rested on law. Their jailing was arbitrary and so is their release.”

Imran’s three sisters — Noreen, Aleema and Uzma — have been in jail on the Lahore deputy commissioner’s (DC) orders as the PTI geared up for a protest march towards Islamabad. Their detention was initially ordered for 30 days.

Their detention was then challenged in the Lahore High Court after the 30-day period lapsed last month, following which the Punjab government informed the court that it had been extended for another 30 days.

Aleema, who was the first to be detained, still remains in jail.

On Oct 28, Noreen was moved from Kot Lakhpat jail to the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) due to high blood pressure. At the time, her lawyer claimed that no family member had been informed about her deteriorating health.

The PTI had also condemned Noreen’s transfer to the PIC without informing her family, expressing grave concern over her health and the treatment of “political prisoners”.

However, the government had insisted that she was “fine” after being provided medical treatment.

“As per the information available, she is fine and all her medical tests are normal,” the adviser to the prime minister on political affairs, Rana Sanaullah, had informed the Senate on Oct 29.

Source: dawn

The tide of history cannot be stopped, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, ​while urging peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan and making no mention of using force, though he still drew a firm rebuff from Taipei.

China views democratically-governed ‌Taiwan as its own territory, despite Taipei’s strong rejection of that claim, and has repeatedly offered a “one country, two systems” model of autonomy not supported by any major Taiwanese political party.

Resolving the Taiwan question is an “unwavering historical mission” of China’s Communist Party, Xi said in a speech in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

“The tide of history cannot be stopped,” Xi added. “The complete reunification of ​the motherland must be realised, and it will certainly be realised.”

Taiwan’s government dismissed the remarks.

Its Mainland Affairs Council said neither the government nor Taiwan’s people ​could accept “one country, two systems,” which would ultimately mean submitting to the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule.

“As for the wording on Taiwan ⁠unification, it isn’t much different from the past,” council spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh told reporters.

Xi’s comments came in a speech on the 160th birthday of revolutionary hero Sun ​Yat-sen, who helped lead a 1911 revolt that ended centuries of rule by emperors and empresses and ushered in the Republic of China.

Xi said China adheres to “peaceful reunification ​and the policy of ‘one country, two systems’” and is willing to talk to Taiwan while upholding the “one-China principle”, or Beijing’s position that both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one country.

All Chinese, including those in Taiwan, should join hands to jointly oppose Taiwan independence “separatist” forces and strive for peaceful development of cross-Strait ties, Xi added.

Despite Xi not mentioning the use of force, which China ​has never renounced for Taiwan, its military operates around the island on a daily basis and is extending its reach further into the Pacific.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said it ​had detected 29 Chinese military aircraft, including J-16 fighter jets and drones, carrying out a “joint combat readiness patrol” around Taiwan in conjunction with Chinese warships, starting on Thursday.

Taiwan tells people to stay away

Xi’s ⁠speech comes a week ahead of the APEC summit in China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen, where he is due to again meet US President Donald Trump, and also a little more than two weeks before important local elections in Taiwan.

Last month, Taiwan called on its people to steer clear of any of China’s events to mark the Sun anniversary, saying China had a distorted view of him and his legacy.

Beijing calls Sun a great national hero and patriot, as well as the forerunner of the 1949 communist ​revolution that forced the defeated Republic of ​China government to flee to Taiwan, ⁠where it remains to this day.

Xi said Sun was a great national hero, a great patriot and a “great pioneer of China’s democratic revolution”.

“Mr Sun Yat-sen consistently upheld the unity of the country and the solidarity of the nation, and he firmly opposed ​all words and actions that split the country or the nation,” he added.

‘Father of the nation’

In Taiwan, Sun is officially ​considered the “father of the ⁠nation” and his portrait hangs in the presidential office, though his political philosophy, “Three Principles of the People”, is no longer a required text for schoolchildren.

While Taiwan President Lai Ching-te and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party champion Taiwan’s separate identity from China, they have been striking a tougher tone with Beijing on the role of the Republic of China.

Taiwan has ⁠been particularly upset ​by Beijing’s effort to claim credit for the victory in World War Two, saying it was the ​Republic of China government that fought alongside the allies, as the People’s Republic of China did not exist at the time.

China says Lai is a “separatist” and has refused to speak with him. Lai says only ​Taiwan’s people can decide their future.

Source: dawn