South Asia Investor Review

Geo TV has lost 80% of its viewers and billions of rupees in advertising revenue since it accused Pakistan's ISI of attempting to  assassinate its anchor Hamid Mir  last April, according to credible reports in the mainstream media. Pakistan's once most-watched cable-satellite television channel Geo, with the country's largest newsgathering network, has lost more than 80% of its viewers in less than a month, according to the  BBC . In addition to Geo News channel, major cable operators across the country have blocked transmission of all other channels of the group, including Geo Super, Geo Tez, Geo Kahani and Geo Entertainment. Among the biggest advertisers, the mobile phone companies accounting for 20% of media spend on Geo group, have pulled their marketing campaigns from Geo Network, including Geo News, Geo Kahani, Geo Super and Geo Entertainment, according to  ProPakistan.pk website  which covers telecommunications news. Pakistan's Top 20 TV Cable...

Pakistan has 109 informal entrepreneurs for every formally documented entrepreneur, ranking the country 4th in the world for the size of its shadow economy, according to a  study published by Professor Erkko Autio and Dr. Kun Fu  of the Business School of London's Imperial College. Pakistan's 109 shadow entrepreneurs for every officially registered one rank it 4th behind Indonesia's 131, India's 127 and the Philippines' 126. Egypt ranks 5th with 103 shadow entrepreneurs. The U.S. appears at number 32 on the list with 2.37 unregistered businesses for each registered one, while the UK exhibits the lowest rate of shadow entrepreneurship among the 68 countries surveyed, with a ratio of only one shadow economy entrepreneur to nearly 30 legally registered businesses. Shadow entrepreneurs are individuals who manage a business that sells legitimate goods and services but they do not register it. This means that they do not pay taxes, operating in a shadow economy wh...

BJP leader Narendra Modi has made history as the first low-caste Hindu to be elected prime minister of India. Modi's spectacular rise from being a chai-walla to a major world leader is sure to inspire the world's largest population of poor who call India home.  Before discussing how Modi's rise will impact India-Pakistan ties, let's briefly examine the new man at the helm of affairs of the world's second most populous nation. Who's Narendra Modi? Narendra Modi will soon become the first low-caste Hindu prime minister of India. Modi was a young man when he joined Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the extremist Hindu nationalists organization in India, which has a long history of admiration for Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, and his "Final Solution". In his book "We" (1939), Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the leader of the Hindu Nationalist RSS wrote, "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by he...

With an estimated $788 billion PPP GDP for 2011, Pakistan's economy is the 23rd largest in the world, according to the World Bank's International Comparison Program (ICP) 2011 . Other surprises in the report include the follpowing: 1.  China may have already pulled ahead of the United States to become world's largest economy.  2.  India's economy is now the world's third largest economy after passing Japan's.  3. Pakistan is the second least expensive country in the world in terms of  how much a US dollar can buy there. Egypt is the least expensive.  4. The six largest middle income economies – China, India, Russia, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico – account for 32.3 percent of world GDP, whereas the 6 largest high income economies – United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, and Italy – account for 32.9 percent. 4. Asia and the Pacific, including China and India, accounts for 30 percent of world GDP, Eurostat-OECD 54 percent, Lati...

Pakistan needs investment of 20% of GDP to achieve 5% economic growth, a capital-to-output ratio (COR) of four, according to Mohsin Mushtaq Chandna, economic minister at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, DC. Major Issues: In a wide-ranging presentation to the Pakistan Club at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Mr. Chandna, an alumnus of the university, listed the following major issues facing Pakistani economy: 1. Pressure on capital account 2. Declining FDI 3. Declining tax to GDP ratio 4. Over reliance on monetary policy 5. Excessive domestic borrowing 6. Extremely volatile internal and external geo-political environment 7. Energy shortages 8. Increase in poverty and unemployment rates Heavy Borrowing:  To make up for the shortfall in investments and tax revenues, the Pakistani government is forced to borrow heavily from commercial banks and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the ...

Silicon Valley is home to 12,000 to 15,000 Pakistani Americans. Thousands of them are working at Apple, Cisco, Google, Intel, Oracle and hundreds of other high-tech companies from small start-ups to large Fortune 500 corporations. Pakistani-Americans are contributing to what Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describe as  "The Second Machine Age"  in a recent book with the same title. Pakistani-American Ecosystem: Pakistani-American entrepreneurs , advisers, mentors, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants and lawyers make up a growing ecosystem in Silicon Valley. Dozens of Pakistani-American founded start-ups have been funded by top venture capital firms. Many such companies have either been acquired in M&A deals or gone public by offering shares for sale at major stock exchanges.  Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN)  has become a de facto platform for networking among Pakistani-American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. It holds an a...