Claim: Toyota Indus Motors is set to permanently shut down manufacturing in Pakistan and leave Pakistan permanently. Fact: The claim is misleading. Public relations representatives from Toyota Indus Motors confirmed to Soch Fact Check that there are no plans to exit Pakistan. Furthermore, Toyota Indus Motors is a Pakistani company with no presence overseas, which […]
Claim: Bayer Pharmaceuticals has announced they will halt operations in Pakistan, and company assets have been sold to another business. The news was shared by X (formerly Twitter) user (@asadnasir2000) and he cited a Daily Times article titled, “Bayer pharmaceutical company announces closing business in Pakistan,” as a source. Fact: The tweet and the article […]
Claim: The economy of Pakistan has shrunk from 6.1% to 0.3%. Fact: The economy of Pakistan has not shrunk or entered a negative region but registered a comparatively lower GDP growth rate of 0.3%, as opposed to 6.1% earlier, indicating that it has experienced a slowdown. On 25 May 2023, the Express Tribune published a […]
Claim: A viral Whatsapp forward message claims that the government has passed a bill which will result in government employees receiving pensions according to their basic salary when they were recruited, instead of their last salary slip. Fact: No bill has been passed or proposed by the government that would result in a significant decrease […]
Claim: The rate of the US dollar against the Pakistani rupee (USD-PKR) fell by 18 to 20 rupees in the open market in July 2023. Fact: This claim is false. The USD-PKR rate fell by 12 rupees in the interbank market and 10.7 rupees in the open market between 3 July and 8 July 2023, […]
Claim: A video on social media shows APTMA patron-in-chief Dr Gohar Ejaz asking Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to help and save the textile industry. Fact: The claim is false because the video is not from 2023. The video was shared as early as 2017 and has been making rounds on social media ever since. On […]
Claim: Ansar Abbasi said the hike in petrol prices is a great decision and the public will now perform religious prayers instead of roaming in markets. Fact: The claim originated from a satirical tweet, which was eventually disseminated as real news. On 16 April 2023, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) member Shehbaz Gill retweeted a statement attributed […]
Claim: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Ishaq Dar was in Qatar on 25 January. Fact: While Dar had flown to Doha to meet with his Qatari counterpart, he was back in the country on 25 January. On 25 January, economist and writer Yousuf Nazar tweeted that he believed Pakistan’s finance minister Ishaq Dar was […]
Claim: A video shows a massive crowd protesting in Gilgit-Baltistan against the government in January 2023. Fact: The claim is misleading because the video is not from the 2023 demonstrations but from 2017, when people protested against taxation rules in the region. On 8 January 2023, a Facebook user posted a video with an Urdu […]
Claim: All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has announced the closure of textile mills across the country from 31 December 2022. Fact: APTMA clarified that the news regarding the closure of the textile industry is baseless and fake. Fact or Fiction? On 26 December 2022, the Facebook page The Bahawalpur shared a screenshot of a […]
Claim: Any US dollar notes below year 2021 will not be acceptable from January 2023. Fact: The US is not discontinuing the use of US dollar bills printed before 2021 from January 2023 onwards. On 5 November 2022, Observer Times shared an article with the given claim. It read, “Sequel to the just concluded extraordinary […]
Claim: A graph shared in a viral tweet shows the rate of inflation in Pakistan along with the level of media outcry about inflation under the PTI government vs the PDM government. It claims that the media disproportionately created an outcry about inflation under the PTI government, as compared to the growing inflation under PDM […]