Pakistan success stories

[Pracs]

Poverty reduction in Pakistan over the Last 12 years

An Asian Development Bank report says Asian nations have made progress in reducing poverty, but there are indications that income disparities have widened. Economists at the Asian Development Bank say the number of people in Asia living on less than a dollar a day fell in the 12-year period ending in 2002.

According to a bank report released Thursday, 688 million Asians lived in extreme poverty in 2002, compared with 921 million in 1990. Much of that decline was in China. However, the report says, 60 percent of the region's people still live on the edge of extreme poverty, earning less than two dollars a day.

Economists say high economic growth in the region has helped reduce poverty. But that growth, they say, widened the income gap between rich and poor, and this could hamper future efforts to cut poverty.

In South Asia, the bank says, the number of people earning less than a dollar a day in Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka dropped over the 12-year period. But the number increased in India and Bangladesh.

India has seen some of the fastest economic growth in world. But between 1990 and 2002, the bank says, the number of extremely poor people rose by five million to 356 million.

Jayati Ghosh, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, says Indian farmers are among those severely affected. "Small cultivators found it was impossible for them to earn a living, and most of them are forced into debt," he says. "And now, many of them cannot repay their debts. And, that's why we are continuing to have a huge explosion of farmers' suicide."

Growing poverty in rural areas led voters to oust the Bharatiya Janata Party from power in May. Professor Ghosh says the new Congress government has to spend more to generate jobs and build infrastructure.

In Southeast Asia, Vietnam saw the biggest improvement, with the number of people living in extreme poverty falling nearly 70 percent over the 12 years.

Among Central Asian states, the bank says, Uzbekistan appears to be having the most difficult time fighting poverty. The study says the number of people earning less than a dollar a day surged 1,200 percent from 1990 to 2002.


http//english.chosun.com/w21data/html/new...0408270008.html

VOA News
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Edited by - pracs on Sep 03 2004 73252 PM

Edited by - pracs on Sep 04 2004 122446 PM

[Pracs]

Swedish firm begins truck production

Liaquat Ali Jatoi, the federal minister for industries and production, Tuesday has invited Volvo Company to assemble cars and buses in Pakistan to get market share in the auto sector.

He said this while addressing launching ceremony of world’s renowned Volvo FM Truck of VPL Limited, a Swedish company here.

The minister inaugurated the FM truck on behalf of the Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujat Hussain due to his other important engagements. He said there is huge demand of cars and due to this the local car assemblers are not timely delivering the vehicles to the customers.

He said that the government would provide all assistance to the Volvo Company for assembling cars and buses in Pakistan and also stressed the need for transfer of technology.

In the past, Volvo implemented a comprehensive urban transport project in the city of Lahore, funded by Swedish government. Over the years, Volvo has also played an important role in the development of the road network in Pakistan, as Volvo dump trucks have been extensively used by both Pakistani and foreign companies working in this sector.

The Volvo FM truck will bring new technology standards and quality product at affordable price. It will be an important breakthrough in the construction industry and in the automobile sector.

It will play a very important role in the development of engineering sector of Pakistan by promoting and encouraging vendor industry in the private sector. Volvo FM truck will be a trendsetter in the production of commercial vehicles involving high level of technology and international standards, he maintained.

Mr Jatoi said greatest potential of Pakistan, after the textile sector, lies in the engineering sector and hoped that the introduction of FM truck launched by VPL Limited will help Pakistan’s transport sector to develop and achieve international standards, and inspire others to invest in this sector.

Kanooz Mohyuddin, managing director of VPL Limited, in his welcome address, asked the government to improve oil efficiency and make legislation for good vehicles on the road. He said the company would invest more in this sector.

Thomas Thurison, marketing manager of Volvo Swedish-Pakistan Company, said Volvo is a large producer of truck and buses in the world and have 130 markets. He asked the government to implement the EURO-3 standards in Pakistan.

Deputy chief of mission of Swedish embaasy in Pakistan also addressed on the occasion and said that the commercial relations between the two countries are expanding and Swedish investors are interested to invest in Pakistan. He said that Volvo has played a role in the road network in Pakistan and also helped in the environmental areas

This news is quoted from this source

http//www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p...25-8-2004_pg5_8

[jbladeus]

Interesting facts presented in your first post Pracs.

Can you please give me the source and/or link of the original report?

________________________
Arrrgh... it sure's gonna be mighty rough sailin' today ... mates!

[Pracs]

First Pakistani car.

The first all made in pakistan car (a 4 wheeled vehicle) its the 'Sitara city cart' by Habib Motors at an introductory price of 126.5 k PKR.

I am not sure if its hit the market yet.

'Born in Pakistan and proud of it'

check out the website for details

http//habibmotorcars.com/main.html

[Pracs]

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial" id=quote>quote<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Interesting facts presented in your first post Pracs.

Can you please give me the source and/or link of the original report?

________________________
Arrrgh... it sure's gonna be mighty rough sailin' today ... mates!
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Tahoma, Arial" size=2 id=quote>

Sorry missed that one out check out the link for your reference


http//english.chosun.com/w21data/html/new...0408270008.html

[Pracs]

Excerpts from an article I found at one of the forums;

Pakistan’s lost capital
------------------------

The present haphazard, corrupt and archaic land records system has tremendous ramifications, both economic and social. The Musharraf government has placed great emphasis on attracting investment through privatisation and otherwise. Microfinance has also been earmarked as an emerging sector and development of infrastructure has taken up a significant portion of the recent budget. But there can be limited progress on these fronts if our land records system is not urgently modernised. For instance, why would an investor buy KESC or FESCO if the title to their assets or property is uncertain or has not been legally transferred to the entities in question? Would you blame a bank for not accepting land as collateral for a loan big or small when presented with an indecipherable land title document? How can the government excel in planning and infrastructure on the basis of outdated, faded cloth maps? Would you feel safe buying a house in Gulberg, Lahore when its records are in the custody of the Patwari? Pakistan probably loses out on millions in lost investment for this reason alone.

The good news is that De Soto’s theory has resonated amongst the top members of our government, including the President himself. The problems have been recognised and the administration has decided to tackle them. The objective is to make all land records publicly and easily available and in a simple format so it is immediately apparent who owns what. Courts, banks and citizens should all be able to access the records and the possibility of abuse and fraud by the Patwari should be removed. In fact, the Government of the Punjab has been incredibly pro-active in this regard and has decided to develop and implement a system that would
a. make all transactions relating to land transparent and seamless.
b. Decrease rural poverty by providing secure land titles and tenure and encourage dealings in land.
c. Encourage and increase investment in urban and rural areas.
d. Increase government revenue through transparent and equitable taxation regimes.
e. Improve land management and local planning with the help of clear, easily accessible and accurate information.

Land Records Management Information Systems (LRMIS)

In March 2003, on the initiative of the Government of the Punjab, an advertisement calling for open tenders to bid on a solution to the problem was issued. Out of 42 national and international bidders, the Lahore-based company, Accountancy Outsourcing Services (Pvt) Ltd (AOS) presented the most viable and groundbreaking solution and were awarded a contract to modernise the existing land records in a particular area. They were later awarded a second contract to modernise the process of registration of deeds as this is closely linked to land records. For instance, presently in urban areas, mutations in deeds (i.e. sale deeds etc) must be registered at the land registry office, while in rural areas registration is verbal and is effected in front of a Patwari, a witness and Nambardar (local village authority). If registration of deeds and land records are linked and can be effected from a single platform, the system will be made far easier, advanced, less time consuming and less open to abuse.

AOS and the government have formulated a system called LRMIS to make the present land records system simple, modern and secure. At its root, the system significantly eliminates chances of abuse by Patwaris. According to Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, Chief Minister of the Punjab, “the introduction of LRMIS will certainly eliminate the monopoly of the Patwari in revenue matters…and will attain accuracy, transparency and efficiency of the Revenue Department.”

It has been decided that the entire land records in Pakistan will be computerised and made available through a single platform. However, this is not just a matter of transferring details of ownership from one medium to another. Land records are by their very nature dynamic. They are not a static record of landholding. Don’t forget, there is detailed information in all 17 of the Patwari’s registers. The nature of landholding is changing all the time — people give portions to their sons and daughters, tenants come and go, people buy and sell, crop size in any given year is different…the list goes on. Therefore, rather than laboriously writing in registers and cross-indexing all the 17 registers, which can take weeks and is difficult to locate, if all the information is computerised, all of it becomes available at the click of a button. For instance, at the touch of a button, you can tell who the legal owner of the property is, what the house looks like, who are the heirs, if it is a farm, what crops are grown there etc.

Significantly, Bill Gates of Microsoft heard about this project and was very keen to get involved. Microsoft has therefore teamed up with AOS to provide them with technological support and top of the line equipment.

Stage 1 Back to Sher Shah

The system that has been developed by AOS is nothing short of remarkable. The first thing that had to be done was to take a leaf out of the incomparable Sher Shah Suri’s book and make a map of Pakistan. But the map AOS have made is no ordinary map. As Pakistan’s satellite ‘disappeared’, AOS purchased detailed satellite maps taken by the American satellite ‘Quickbird’, which, incidentally, provided the maps the Americans used for their precision bombing in Afghanistan and misused to imprecisely identify chemical factories and vans allegedly containing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! Quickbird is one of the best satellites used for mapping. A single pixel can cover an area as small as 0.6 metres (Pakistan’s ill fated satellite had an awful 30 metres resolution).

Rest of the article can be found on the magazine's website http//www.bluechipmag.com/

Mapping Pakistan - Taking a Leaf Out of Sher Shah's Book

[Pracs]

Not exactly a success story, but is if you look at the investment involved both human and capital

British university to open campus in Lahore
--------------------------------------------


The London Metropolitan University (LMU) plans to open a full-fledged campus in Lahore. Punjab Education Minister Mian Imran Masood has constituted a special committee to finalise approve for the project.

The committee was formed after LMU executives’ met with the minister at his office on Wednesday. Mr Masood told reporters that the establishment of an LMU campus in Lahore would improve the standard of education in Pakistan. He said the Punjab chief minister supported the project and had directed all the departments concerned to fully cooperate with the university.

He said the LMU management would invest seven million pounds in the campus. He said the university was considering setting up a campus in China and India, but had selected Pakistan because of its conducive investment environment. He said the university would not be an affiliated institution, but act completely as a British University. It will not be allowed to affiliate other colleges in Pakistan.

LMU Marketing and Communications Director Mark Bickerton said the campus should be open by September 2005 or 2006, and the students would be charged the same tuition fees as that charged by local private universities.

He said the LMU was the second largest university in Britain and offered 285 bachelors courses, 140 masters courses and PhDs in 60 disciplines. He said Lahore had been selected for the campus because of its historical background and after it received more than 5,000 applications from Punjab through its regional office to get admission in the UK campus in the last two years. He said they also offered students several scholarships.

The meeting was also attended by Additional Chief Secretary Khushnood Akhtar Lashari, Planning and Development Chairman Salman Ghani, Education Secretary Shahid Rashid, Finance Secretary Salman Siddique, Higher Education Secretary Nazir Saeed, Mr Bickerton and LMU Regional Director Faisal Hassan.

http//www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p...2-9-2004_pg7_22

[Pracs]

US firm to shift software centres to Pakistan
RECORDER REPORT

ISLAMABAD (August 06 2004) Halliburton's Landmark Graphics Division, a US-based company, announced on Thursday that it has decided to shift some of its main software development centres in Norway to Pakistan.

LMK Resources is also looking for possibility of transferring some major projects to Pakistan.

Peter Bernard, President, Landmark Graphics, a division of Halliburton, USA informed this to Information Technology Minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari during a meeting here.

IT Secretary Khalid Saeed Nooruddin Baqai, member telecom at the Information Technology Ministry and Dr Amir Matin, Managing Director, Pakistan Software Export Board, were also present on the occasion.

Peter Bernard thanked the Government of Pakistan for the support and incentives extended to his company, which helped it in rapidly growing in Pakistan.

Peter said, "LMK Resources had already employed around 350 people in Pakistan and is expecting major growth in future."

He appreciated the government incentives-laden policy for IT sector. He said that LMK Resources was taking full advantage of the incentives and is rapidly growing in Pakistan. LMK Resources would invest $20 million to provide training facilities and other IT-enabled services in Pakistan in two to three years.

Peter said, "We expect our business volume to double in the next one-and-a-half-year in Pakistan."

He said LMK Resources, founded in 1994 with a team of 13 professionals, had shown a consistent growth rate of 30 percent per annum. LMK Resources is a part of Halliburton, a leading company providing products and services to oil and gas companies. Its employees are more than 100,000 people in over 120 countries.

Awais Leghari thanked the delegation for showing keen interest in expanding their operations in Pakistan.

He said the ministry was working aggressively to help in creating in the next three years about five to six internationally medium-sized companies in the country, offering software development and IT-enabled services to local and international players.

He said the government had devised investment-friendly and export-oriented policies to boost IT sector and Pakistan Software Export Board was restructured recently to incorporate in its board top professionals from the private and public sectors to gear up efforts for the growth and uplift of the IT sector.

He said the ministry was expecting three to four international players to visit Pakistan next month to look for the possibility to invest in animation industry whose turnover had crossed $12 billion mark world over and was set to grow at a massive scale in the coming years.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2004

[Pracs]

GCC gives Pakistan partner status
----------------------------------


ISLAMABAD, Aug 26 The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) on Thursday signed an agreement with Pakistan that would give it dialogue partner status with the bloc.

The framework agreement was signed by GCC secretary general Abdul Rahman al Attiyah, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and Kuwait Foreign Minister Mohamed Sabah al Salem al Sabah.

Kuwait is current chairman of the Riyadh-based GCC, which groups Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The Kuwaiti foreign minister said the agreement would bring Pakistan and the GCC closer.

It would promote economic cooperation, exchange of information and encourage technical economic cooperation with the grouping, he added. The framework agreement would lead towards the establishment of a free trade area, he said.

Separately he inked agreements with Pakistan to enhance bilateral political consultations and to boost cooperation in curbing narcotics trafficking, officials said. -AFP

http//www.dawn.com/2004/08/27/nat7.htm

[Pracs]

New Pak television channel next year
By Haseeb Haider

4 September 2004

ABU DHABI - Pakistan’s first internationally-branded business, financial, economic news and information television channel - CNBC Pakistan would be launched in the first quarter of 2005, announced Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, who is Chairman of CNBC Pakistan, at a Press conference held in the capital, yesterday.

“Broadcasting from state-of-the-art studios and production facilities in Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore,” he said that the CNBC Pakistan will transmit live programming in both Urdu and in English from Pakistan’s perspective 24-hours a day, seven days a week.

“We would set new standards of accurate and credible TV journalism,” said Shaikh Nahyan, adding that professionals along with the new talent would be hired to operate the new television station to provide quality programmes.

Speaking on the occasion, Zafar Siddiqui, President, CNBC Pakistan, said that the channel would be a notable addition to the Pakistani media landscape as the country has recently liberalised its media policy allowing private sector to establish television channels ending monopoly of state-run television. He said the channel would utilise the global resources of the CNBC network to deliver a continuous flow of relevant, engaging news and information from all of the Pakistani markets and from business centres around the world.

“CNBC will broadcast as per the highest international newsgathering and reporting standards and we have also made a large investment in the human resources to bring the best and most talented Pakistanis to the channel,” he said.

CNBC Pakistan, Mr Siddiqui said, is owned by VNTV, a Pakistani company which would have access to the CNBC global network which reaches 200 million households around the world and the world class resources of Dow Jones & Company. CNBC affiliates are noted for their on-screen trademark business assets including the streaming stock ticker, information stack, and the market and data specific Hotboards, he said.

He said with a paid-up capital of $14 million, VNTV is a public limited company which will offer its shares to general public for subscription by the end of year 2005. He said a total of four slots, two each at Pas-2 and Pak-Sat have been booked to air the transmission for the viewers across the globe.

He said the CNBC is a division of the recently-formed media conglomerate NBC-Universal that is comprised of CNBC, the leading global business news network; NBC, the number one television broadcast network in the US; Universal Studios, the world’s premiere motion picture studio, as well as library of 4,000 film titles and 40,000 television episodes, extensive movie and television franchises around the world and powerfully-branded theme parks, resorts and consumer products.


http//www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle...ion=theuae&col=

[Goodman]

One could see that you are making effort in passing on information to forum users. Though it must have been taking a lot of your time but in the interest of obtaining valuable information I am going to be a bit selfish in asking .... Please keep it up.

[Goodman]

<pre id=code><font face=courier size=2 id=code> He said with a paid-up capital of $14 million, VNTV is a public limited company which will offer its shares to general public for subscription by the end of year 2005</font id=code></pre id=code>

I loved every inch of the posting apart from the above. Lets see how much of the company is floated and where does the real control and power lies after floatation.

[Pracs]

Friday September 3, 1123 AM
Pakistan's Oil & Gas Development Finds Natural Gas in Sindh
---------------------------------------------------------
ISLAMABAD, Sept 3 Asia Pulse - Oil & Gas Development Co., the country's biggest exploration firm, has discovered around 60 billion cubic feet of natural gas reserves in Sindh province, a company official said Wednesday.

The official said the reserves were found in a block within the Tando Alla Yar exploration area near Hyderabad. OGDC fully owns the block.

OGDC, which owns 50 percent of the country's oil and 40 percent of its gas reserves, currently produces 26,000 barrels of oil and 751 million cubic feet of gas a day.

OGDC's annual natural gas production is about 275 billion cubic feet.

(PPI)http//asia.news.yahoo.com/040903/4/1nowk.html

[Pracs]

Pakistan ends ties with IMF tomorrow
--------------------------------------

ISLAMABAD Pakistan’s 15 years relationship with the International Monetary Fund ends on Monday (tomorrow).

Launched in 1990, one of the longest exchanges of money and mind, the performance-assessment process by IMF experts concludes with the final collection of figures on government spending and income.

Van Rooden, mission chief of Pakistan Desk, will conclude his aricle-4 consultations for preparing a report on Pakistani economy that "would be of little bearing on the future rating of economy for credit-seeking or judgement of poverty-generating factors," said a senior official. Rooden is accompanied by his team Temur Beg, Axelschill Mapefcillgen and Herald Finger.

The mission is expected to file its report in a month after departure from Pakistan, during which "no talks of revival of the programme for assisting Islamabad have been convened," said sources.

These talks have been repeatedly made into points of reference in the past couple of years ever since Islamabad made it public that the relationship had been culminating into a "fair end".

Over the past week, the mission has been gathering performance and evaluation data from the federal ministries and divisions.

The Central Board of Revenue told the mission that Rs 519 billion (final figures) were collected in the 2003-04 in taxes and Rs 590 billion would be collected in the current fiscal.

Subsidies (adjusted and obvious) have been removed from all sectors, including the agricultural products while tax rebates have been radically reduced for export sectors.

Import duties’ upper slabs have been drastically scaled down from the 60-65 per cent of the early 90s to 25 per cent in the initial years of the new millennium.

GST has been levied on all extendable services while its rate has been consolidated at 15 per cent to boost deposits through improved administrative methods.

The fast track import clearance (24-hour) system has been introduced to remove delays while all the major and medium tax-depositors have been offered institutionalised services a the LTUs and MTUs of facilitating against the traditional bottlenecks in refund-clearing and dispute settlement. One area that remains to be of vigilant monitoring in Pakistan is deficit financing on which Pakistan has reported "appreciable" improvement over the past half decade, sources said.

http//www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?ne...=&f_type=source

[Pracs]

55 things for Pakistan

Got this form a forum,.. written for an american pakistani.. but i guess we could do some of these

Just Do One Thing for Pakistan!
================================

Pakistan is one amazing country. It has enough scientific knowledge and technical know how to build atomic bomb and ballistic missiles. At the same time, however, 51 million Pakistanis have no access to essential medicine. 46 million adults cannot read and write.

One response to our amazingly weak, yet strong, nation is to blame colonialism and criticize one or the other government.

On the other hand there are thousands of Pakistanis and hundreds of organizations who have decided not to give up on improving life in Pakistan. Instead of waiting for some government to do something, they work on changing things by themselves. "Allah does not change the state of people unless they change what is within themselves" Quran 1311. These are the Pakistanis who are responsible for the privatization of education in Pakistan.

We decided to come up with 55 ideas, which any one of us in America can adopt to serve Pakistan in our individual capacity. It will be a small step, but still a step in the right direction.


1. Celebrate next August 14 with your family
2. Produce a Pakistani better than yourself
3. Buy a buffalo for someone
4. Adopt a public school
5. Translate health information into Urdu
6. Start sponsoring a village in Pakistan
7. Develop a dialog with an Imam
8. Fight tobacco in Pakistan
9. Celebrate Pakistan Day
10. Start sponsoring a Baithak school in Pakistan
11. Help form a PTA in a Pakistani school
12. Plant trees in Pakistan
13. Correct wrong maps about Pakistan and Kashmir
14. Organize project clean up Pakistan
15. Sponsor an intern in the US government
16. Fight pollution in Pakistan
17. Revive the Pakistan Students' Association
18. Challenge ethnic jokes and stereotyping
19. Develop a children's play for Pakistan
20. Give a gift subscription to a Pakistani library
21. Invest in a Pakistani business
22. How your wedding can help Pakistan
23. Teach Pak-americans how to challenge discrimination
24. Welcome new Pakistani immigrants
25. Put Urdu literature on cassette for the blind and elderly
26. Initiate a media watch group
27. Create a "Pakistan reading room" in your community
28. Make your city a sister city to your hometown in Pakistan
29. Organize an essay contest for Pak-American youth
30. Establish a Pak-American speaker's bureau
31. Auction off artwork and donate the proceeds
32. Set aside a portion of your budget for Pakistan
33. Produce a calendar for Pakistan
34. Submit something about Pakistan to a writing contest
35. Talk to your children about tolerance
36. Promote the positive about Pakistan on message boards
37. Interview the "average" Pakistani person
38. Organize an Iqbal night
39. Make an Urdu room in your home
40. Organize a video discussion about Pakistan
41. Build a rural health clinic
42. Start up a discussion group about women in Pakistan
43. Produce a project about Pakistan for your class
44. Establish a Pak-American youth award in your community
45. Start a Pak-American TV program in your city
46. Record "Sound prints of life in Pakistan"
47. Be Pakistani, buy Pakistani
48. Keep your clanin Pakistan briefed about Muslims in America
49. Organize an open house about Pakistan
50. Pay back to Pakistan
51. Publish a book
52. Patronize a sports team
53. Start up a website about some aspect of Pakistan
54. Establish a fund named after your mother
55. Build a dam