KARACHI: Atif Ikram Sheikh, President FPCCI, has stressed that escalating military tensions in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have triggered alarm across Pakistan\u2019s trade and industry landscape \u2013 with business leaders warning that soaring freight costs and delayed shipments could derail country\u2019s economy. Atif Ikram Sheikh highlighted that following the outbreak of the Iran conflict in late February 2026, global shipping markets have been thrown into turmoil. With commercial vessel traffic through the strategic waterway grinding to a halt and shipping lines have imposed crippling war-risk surcharges \u2013 raising fears of a balance of payments crisis for Pakistan. The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has called for immediate government intervention to protect the nation\u2019s trade and industrial sectors. FPCCI Chief explained that the geopolitical instability in the Gulf poses a threat to the country\u2019s export competitiveness \u2013 with approximately 80 per cent of Pakistan\u2019s crude oil imports and a quarter of our LNG transiting through the Strait of Hormuz \u2013 and, any prolonged disruption will inevitably bleed into our foreign exchange reserves and trigger severe inflationary pressures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KARACHI: Atif Ikram Sheikh, President FPCCI, has stressed that escalating military tensions in the Middle East and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have triggered alarm across Pakistan\u2019s trade and industry landscape \u2013 with business leaders warning that soaring freight costs and delayed shipments could derail country\u2019s economy. Atif Ikram Sheikh highlighted that following …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":95182,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95215,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95179\/revisions\/95215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}