Pak, India agree to further trade relations

New Delhi: Pakistan on Tuesday agreed to broaden cooperation on many business fronts with India by February in the latest sign of a thaw in relations between them.

The commerce secretaries at a bilateral meeting in Delhi agreed that Pakistan would notify India by February of a “negative list” of items that it cannot trade with its neighbour.

“There has been further progress,” India’s trade secretary Rahul Khullar said at a briefing after the meeting with his Pakistani counterpart.

Replacing the current limited “positive list” of items that can be traded with a short list of products that cannot, is a step towards regular trade ties.

Earlier this month, Pakistan promised to give India a most favoured nation trade status, a move that would end heavy restrictions on what India is allowed to export across the border.

India and Pakistan also agreed to push for easing of visa rules that severely restrict business travel across the heavily armed border. They will look at the feasibility of electricity trading and will open a second road trading post by February.

Imran Khan

Imran Khan Niazi (Urdu: عمران خان نیازی; born 25 November 1952) is a Pakistani politician and former Pakistani cricketer, playing international cricket for two decades in the late twentieth century. After retiring, he entered politics. Currently, besides his political activism, Khan is also a philanthropist, cricket commentator and Chancellor of the University of Bradford and Founder and Chairman Board of Governors of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre.
Khan played for the Pakistani cricket team from 1971 to 1992 and served as its captain intermittently throughout 1982-1992. After retiring from cricket at the end of the 1987 World Cup, he was called back to join the team in 1988. At 39, Khan led his teammates to Pakistan's first and only World Cup victory in 1992. He has a record of 3807 runs and 362 wickets in Test cricket, making him one of eight world cricketers to have achieved an 'All-rounder's Triple' in Test matches.^[1] On 14 July 2010, Khan was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.^[2]
In April 1996, Khan founded and became the chairman of a political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice).^[3] He represented Mianwali as a member of the National Assembly from November 2002 to October 2007.^[4]
Khan, through worldwide fundraising, has also help establish the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre in 1996 and Mianwali's Namal College in 2008.

Interest rates in the UK since 1694

Interest rates since 1694: the perils of capitalism illustrated by William Hogarth as the South Sea Bubble bursts in 1720, a few years after this data starts.

Interest rates in the UK have been maintained today. Find out just how this compares to rates in the past

Since 1997 rates have been decided by the nine members of the Bank's monetary policy committee, which is chaired by the Bank's governor. It meets each month to vote on whether to raise or lower
rates, or leave them unchanged.

Interest rates are one lever used to control the economy. The MPC's remit is to keep inflation near the official target of 2%. Raising the base rate should bring down inflation by encouraging saving and deterring people from borrowing - thus lowering demand for goods in the shops. Lowering rates should stimulate economic demand and push up prices, as consumers would be left with more disposable income after paying mortgage costs.

This base rate is used to calculate repayments for tracker and variable-rate mortgages. The interest rates paid on savings accounts should also move in line with the base rate, although retail banks are not obliged to pass on changes in full.

These rates, from the Bank of England, go back to 1694 which (as any history student will tell you) is actually before the formation of the UK in May 1707. But it is one of the world's most complete economic datasets and says a lot about the UK's economic history