South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan joined the list of LNG importers last year and promptly became one of the world's fastest growing LNG markets, according to  Shell 2017 LNG report .  The South Asian nation has suffered a crippling  energy shortage  as demand has risen sharply to over 6 billion cubic feet per day,  far outstripping the domestic production of about 4 billion cubic feet per day. Recent LNG imports are beginning to make a dent in Pakistan's ongoing energy crisis and helping to  boost economic growth . Current global oversupply and  low LNG prices  are helping customers get better terms on contracts. Pakistan Gas Market Forecast. Source: Platts Global LNG Market: Pakistan, Egypt and Jordan together imported 13.9 million tons of LNG, more than the combined increase of 11.9 million tons by the most populous nations of China and India. The biggest increase in LNG exports in 2016 came from Australia, where exports increased by 15 MT to a total of 44.3 MT. It was also a significant y

A headline in the Economist magazine's recent issue screams: "Bangladesh's GDP per person is now higher than Pakistan's". Let's examine this development to understand its causes. Per Capita GDP: The  Economist article  explains its headline as follows: "Last month revealed a remarkable turnaround. Bangladesh’s GDP per person is now higher than Pakistan’s. Converted into dollars at market exchange rates, it was $1,538 in the past fiscal year (which ended on June 30th). Pakistan’s was about $1,470....Strange as it may sound, Bangladesh jumped ahead because of an advance in Pakistan. On August 25th Pakistan released the results of its census, updating earlier population estimates. They showed that the country has  207.8m people , more than 9m more than previously thought. It may now have the fifth biggest population in the world, surpassing Brazil’s. But the new count also lopped 4-5% off Pakistan’s GDP per person, the arithmetic consequence of revealing

Guest Post by Rashid Ahmad You should go back and visit. You would be surprised! Pakistan in your mind may be frozen in time, but real Pakistan has moved on. Everything has changed. Pakistani Capital Islamabad You will find both familiarity and alienness there. It would appear to you like a dream. Or perhaps like being on Star Trek Holodeck, where things are familiar but there are new actors on the deck, and you are bit of a stranger. First thing that would hit you would be the increase in population.  Too many people  every where, compared to the time you left Pakistan. Some areas that were farms and free spaces when you were there would now be occupied by  new housing developments . The physical appearances would have changed. There would not be any complete transformation to prosperity, but new buildings replacing the old ones, and  new motorways , would change the physical reality. You would find distances have shrunk. The places that seemed far away because you wa

The U.S. relationship with Pakistan has always been essentially transactional since the early days of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. What would the quid pro quo look like between Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and the Trump administration in the current differences over America's new  Afghan policy ? Let's try and answer this question. Transactional History:  Aid and cooperation has been forthcoming whenever successive American administrations needed something from Pakistan and then suddenly stopped and sanctions imposed on Pakistan when the US goals were accomplished. This happened in 1960s, 1990s and likely to happen yet again now under the Trump administration. The history of the relationship is such that Pakistan has often been described variously as "the most allied ally" and "the most sanctioned ally" in the last few decades. Trump's Tough Talk: U.S. President Donald Trump, a real estate devel

Is Pakistan's growing population a "disaster in the making" ? Is it a bigger disaster than the population bust in Europe and East Asia with their aging societies and shrinking labor force? Where will the investment in education, health and job creation come from in Pakistan to meet the growing population? Is there a demographic dividend with Pakistan's labor force growing faster than the overall population? Will growth in labor force help increase domestic savings rate in Pakistan? What is the relationship between GDP growth and job creation? What is Pakistan's employment elasticity relative to other nations in South Asia? Source: World Bank Report "More and Better Jobs in South Asia" Who are the Rohingya? Why are they being attacked, raped, killed and driven out of their homes in Rakhine state? Why is the Myanmar government and its allied Buddhist militias, including monks, burning Rohingya villages? Is it a " textbook example of ethnic cl

About 20 million Pakistanis are expected to enter the labor market over the next 10 years. Can Pakistani economy add jobs at a rate of 2 million a year for the next decade to absorb all new entrants to its work force? What is Pakistan's employment elasticity? How fast must it grow to create these jobs? How much investment is needed to achieve the required growth rate? Pakistan Labor Market: Pakistan's work force is about 68 million, according to the World Bank . Its  labor force expansion  is the 3rd biggest in the world after India's and Nigeria's, according to  UN World Population Prospects 2017 .   Pakistan's working age population  in 15-64 years age bracket is expected to increase by 27.5 million people to 147.1 million in 10 years, according to  Bloomberg News' analysis  of data reported in UN World Population Prospects 2017.  Pakistan's increase of 27.5 million is the third largest after India's 115.9 million and Nigeria's 34.2 million

Apple today announced iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and a $1000 iPhone X today, the 10th anniversary of the first iPhone launch, at its new Spaceship-shaped headquarter in Silicon Valley.  iOS 11operating system is also being launched along with the new hardware to support many advanced new features for face identification, wireless charging and augmented reality (AR).  In addition, the OS 11 will include nastaleeq font that is popular with Urdu publishers in Pakistan, according to Silicon Valley based Urdu lover and Nastaliq campaigner Mudassir Azeemi. History of Nastaliq on Apple: Apple did include nastaliq font in iOS 9 Beta 1 after a persistent campaign by Mudassir Azeemi. Unfortunately, it was later dropped in the released version of iOS X.  But Mudassir continued his efforts which appear to have born fruit with iOS 11 being released this month. Apple will now drop naskh and support only nastaliq in native mode for rendering Arabic, Persian and  Urdu  languages. Naskh vs Nastal

Multiple western newspaper headlines are screaming of a " disaster in the making " in Pakistan after the latest population census in the country. These headlines beg the following questions:  Is Pakistan's total fertility rate of 2.62 children per woman a bigger disaster than the sub-replacement level of less than 2 children per woman in the West? Are the rapidly aging western societies and declining working population less of a disaster than Pakistan with its younger population and a growing percentage of it in the work force?  To answer these questions, let's consider the following quote: “So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world. Such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market culture dominated by fundamentalism - a new dark ages.” ― Philip Longman,  The Empty Cradle: How F

Why was Indian journalist Gauri Lankesh murdered? Who killed her? Why are Modi's Hindu Nationalists supporters targeting public intellectuals and journalists critical of Indian government policies? Why has India joined the reporters without borders' list of the world's most dangerous countries for journalists? Why has Muslim become a "derogatory term" in the words of Indian journalist Anoo Bhuyan? How are anti-Muslim Hindutva trolls using the social media to spew hate and issue threats? Murdered Indian Intellectuals Since 2014: Narendra Dabholkar, M.M. Kalburgi, Gauri Lankesh and Govind Pansare. Photos: The Hindu, PTI   Why did China allow BRICs Xiamen Summit declaration to mention some of the "terrorist" groups targeting India over Kashmir issue ? Was this a mistake as claimed by some Chinese think tank analysts like Hu Shisheng of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations? How will this impact China-Pakistan ties? Is this a

There are  3,476 Pakistani beneficiaries  of DACA, former President Barack Obama's initiative providing relief from deportation to over a million young people brought illegally in to the United States as children. President Trump's decision announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions today to end DACA in 6 months' time has put the future of these young men and women in doubt. What is DACA? DACA is the acronym for President Barack Obama's executive order titled "Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals".  It was issued to stop possible deportations of over a million young men and women after the US Congress failed to pass the "Dreamers Act" that would have given them legal status in the United States. DACA Beneficiaries: About 1.3 million DACA applications have been approved as of the second quarter of year 2017, according to the  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) . While the overwhelming majority of DACA recipients are from Me

Pakistan's  labor force expansion  is the 3rd biggest in the world after India and Nigeria, according to  UN World Population Prospects 2017 . Rising working age population and growing workforce participation of both men and women in developing nations like Pakistan will boost domestic savings and investment, according to  Global Development Horizons (GDH) report . Escaping the low savings  low investment trap  will help accelerate the lagging GDP growth rate in Pakistan, as will increased foreign investment such as the Chinese investment in  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor . Pakistan's Total Fertility Rate 2.62 Children Per Woman. Source: Washington Post  Labor Force Expansion: The latest Census 2017 results show that Pakistan's population growth rate has declined to 2.34% between 1998 and 2017, down from 2.61% (from 1981 to 1998) and 3.4% (from 1961-81). Life expectancy has increased from about 62 years in 1998 to 66.5 years now. The total fertility rate has de