From the category archives:
Business & Economy
by Owais Ehsan on March 11, 2010
UNDP statistics released the ‘2010 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report: Power Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific Asia’. According to this report Pakistan’s Human Development Index (HDI) showed a slight improvement of 1.28% and reached 0.572. However my dear country Pakistan is still ranked at 141 out of 182 countries. So what does HDI reflects ?
The HDI provides a composite measure of three dimensions of human development that includes living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of life (measured by purchasing power parity and income). Wiki defines HDI as
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite statistic used as an index to rank countries by level of “human development” and separate developed (high development), developing (middle development), and underdeveloped (low development) countries. The statistic is composed from statistics for Life Expectancy, Education, and GDP collected at the national level.
Here are some key findings of the report (Source : The News Pakistan); [click to continue...]
by Owais Ehsan on March 11, 2010
An industrial park is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. Living in UK, I have come across many such Industrial Parks in almost all the cities. The major ones are in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Also one of the biggest and famous ones is in Dubai known as Jebel Ali Industrial Area. Pakistan never had such Industrial zones , the most nearest being in Faisalabad city (textile). So it was a matter of time some thing like this started happening in Pakistan.
National Industrial Parks Development and Management Company (NIP) Zubair Habib hoped that the project, called the Karachi Creek Industrial Park (KCIP), would create significant job opportunities for skilled and semi-skilled workers and contribute to the national GDP growth
So what benefits do such projects bring? here are a few; [click to continue...]
by Usman Zahid on February 4, 2010
The current government of PPP has continued its one tradition of dropping bombs on the first day of every month. On 1st January, 2010 the government enhanced the gas and electricity prices and on the 1st February, 2010 the government increased the petroleum prices by a whooping Rs 6.1 per litre for Super Petrol i.e. an increase of 9.37% and for High Speed diesel the price has raised to Rs 71.89 per litre from Rs 68.56 per litre an increase of 4.86%.
The increase in the petroleum prices will have an extremely negative impact on the masses especially after the electricity and gas prices had been raised a month back. The country’s economy is already shrinking and the growth has been shadowed by the political instability and now such absurd increase in the petroleum prices will seriously hamper the industrial and domestic structure of the country. [click to continue...]
by Mansoor Ehsan on January 22, 2010
Asia’s largest real estate developer Bahria Town is initiated another low cost residential scheme as Bahria Orchard in Lahore. Earlier Bahria Town introduced “Awamai villas” in Rawalpindi which was also a low cost residential scheme.
Like other projects, Bahria Orchard is also fully packed with green spots, parks, monuments, fountains, gardens, lawns, wide roads and other civic amenities. Located at Raiwind Road, Bahria Orchard offers a wonderfully themed landscaped parks, jogging and biking trails, and a signature Golf and Country Club that will offer riding stables and a spectacular eighteen-hole championship golf course. Bahria Orchard is a combination of low cost scheme, Villas, Residential plots and commercial plots. Here are the details of each: [click to continue...]
by Mansoor Ehsan on January 18, 2010
If you scroll around TV channels, you will only find Asif Zardari’s Darbar , Mians‘ and Choudrys’ blame game; reports on bollywood, bomb blasts, drone attacks, sugar price and other yada yada yada. That is all what is going on at our news channels.
For the past one and a half years, i have been into purchasing medicines and hospital fees (for my dad) and believe me I have been cursing everybody! I consider myself from a family with reasonable financial resources… If this is me - what would be the condition of a poor man. Mind you, treatment of cancer is most costlier!
Reported from Multan (Southern Punjab) Drug prices have increased up to 100 percent in the past few weeks/months. Apart from price increase, general medicines like pain killers are out of stock. A small news appeared in a news paper that Southern Punjab is experiencing shortage of life saving drugs. Here is the news first: [click to continue...]
by Mansoor Ehsan on January 18, 2010
How old have we seen our banks using computerized banking systems? Probably not more than 10 years? Are our banking computerized systems secure enough to pass on the hacking shocks?Apart from security, reliability of the system is another factor. I have experienced this umpteenth time that ATM link is down or when i visit to clear an online cheque for a remote branch, I have to wait - the reason is sir, system down hai!
There have been some kind of advances when it comes to utilizing technology for banking in Pakistan but certainly we are far behind than other nations! It took me six months to get an internet banking account from my Bank but then i didn’t utilize it because it was out of this world! I had to first get written permission from the bank to whom i wanted to transfer money (Oh common! Its for your security :P. For God sake! why don’t you make your system more secure??). It was better i used the physical banking; at least i don’t have to seek permission! [click to continue...]
by Sakina Younus on January 16, 2010
DHA has become a veritable hot spot for the Rawalpindi dwellers. I know so many people who are shifting from Saddar, Gulistan, Chaklala, Westridge and they are all headed the same place-DHA. My own sister is shifting there. Her family is getting a new house built, and the construction has been underway for almost a year and a half now. At least once a week she goes there to oversee the work and discuss the details with the contractors. On a free weekend, not so long ago, I decided to accompany her and my young nephew on their regular site-visit.
It had been quite some time since I had last seen the house so I set about inspecting. 
I looked around the first floor and then went up to where my sister’s and my nephew’s bedrooms were. I happened to peek into the ante-room of the smaller kitchen upstairs and was surprised at the mess there. It was a house under construction of course, so the rods and logs splayed across the floor or the hammers and spanners thrown about and even the cement sacks, paint buckets and screw piles adorning the floor were understandable-it was the domestic mess that made me step back. Pots and pans and dirty cups heaped in a corner; a bundle of clothes on the broken charpaaii; a shopper full of vegetables lying nearby. I came downstairs, and upon my sister’s wish, went down to see their basement. It was a warm morning and I had been comfortable up till now even without a sweater. I could not help going brrrrr as I went down the stairs though. [click to continue...]
by Usman Zahid on January 12, 2010
Long queues are seen at every possible CNG (compressed natural gas) station in Punjab, N.W.F.P and Federal Capital; people sitting in cars during extremely cold and chilled weather, waiting for their turns; something very unusual in the 21st century. How do the leaders feel about it? I am sure they must be feeling very proud of their acts. Cronies of Shaukat Aziz who laid this economic road map have disappeared from this country, who issued hundreds of license for these CNG stations. Such CNG stations have proved to be two edged sword, on one end gas load management has literally become impossible and on the other end millions of rupees were wasted in setting up such business models from where the revenue to the government has been fairly less, employment development has been relatively low and due to heavy imports of such set-ups a lot of foreign currency flew out of country.
The very reason this government is suffering is because there has been not a single change in the government policy from that of Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz. The so-called financial wizard Mr. Aziz [click to continue...]
by Mansoor Ehsan on January 7, 2010
Even though other govt. institutions are under performing but surprisingly FBR has remained efficient in past six months. Well, lets pray that they remain efficient for next half of the year as well. The Federal Board of Revenue has collected Rs577.337 billion during July-Dec, 2009-10 as against Rs553.833 billion collected during the same period last year, showing an increase of 4.2 per cent. Even though the stats do matter but the irony is that collected tax often goes to please the corrupt leaders.
Here is the story that appeared in many online news papers:
ISLAMABAD, Jan 6: The Federal Board of Revenue has collected Rs577.337 billion during July-Dec, 2009-10 as against Rs553.833 billion collected during the same period last year, showing an increase of 4.2 per cent. The revenue collected includes Rs208.594 billion as direct taxes and Rs368.743 billion as indirect taxes.
Asrar Raouf, Member Direct Tax Policy said on Wednesday that the direct taxes this year fell short by 0.8 per cent compared to Rs210.3 billion collected last year. However, the indirect taxes witnessed a growth of 7.3 per cent when compared with Rs343.497 billion collected last year. He revealed that during the month of December, 2009, Rs120 billion were collected against the target of Rs125 billion.
He attributed the shortfall on revenue to Ashura incident in Karachi. Had the tragic incident not occurred the FBR could have realised Rs130 billion, he claimed. He said that if the advance tax of Rs32 billion is included the total tax collection could exceed Rs600 billion.
He expressed the hope that after the approval of the VAT the country would be able to collect in the first year of implementation an additional amount of Rs150 billion. However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that after the enforcement of VAT, Pakistan would be able to fetch an additional tax amount of Rs400 billion. -APP
