South Asia Investor Review

Enrollment of Pakistani students on US F1 visa rose just 5.6% to 7,957 in 2018/19, the slowest rate in 5 years. It's in sharp contrast to 27% jump in Pakistani student enrollment to  28,000 in China  this year. Pakistani F1 Students in US. Source: IIE  Rate of increase in Pakistani students on F-1 visas declined to 5.6%, down from 8.5% in 2014/15 and 14.7% in 2015/16. However, the total number of Pakistani students on F1 visa in the United States has climbed from 5,354 to 7,957. Enrollment of international students from Pakistan on F1 visa declined from a peak of nearly 9,000 in 2001/02 to a low of 4,600 in 2011/12. US Non-Immigrant Visa Rejection Rates. Source US State Dept via Quartz India  Total number of foreign students studying in the United States is nearly  1.1 million , the largest in the world. China hosts nearly 492,000 foreign students. New international student enrollment is  declining in the US  while it is rapidly climbing ...

Pakistan has a low level of motorization with just 9% of the  households owning a car . Nearly half of all households  own a motorcycle . Motorization rates in the country have tripled over the last decade and a half, resulting in nearly 40% of all emissions coming from vehicles. Concerns about climate change and environmental pollution have forced the government to to take a number of actions ranging from adoption of Euro6 emission standards for new vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE) since 2015 and announcement of a national electric vehicle (EV) policy this year. Vehicle Ownership in Pakistan. Source: PBS EV Policy: Pakistan electric vehicle policy 2019 sets EV adoption targets and includes incentives for buyers and manufacturers. It also focuses on development of nationwide charging infrastructure to ease adoption of electric vehicles. Here are some of the salient points of the policy:   Policy Targets:  1. Goal for cars: 30% of new sa...

Recent opening of M5, Pakistan's longest access-controlled motorway, is a boost for the nation's fast-growing road transport sector. The 6-lane 392 kilometers long M5 motorway is longer than than the 375 kilometers long 6-lane M2 motorway. After M5 opening, the only missing section in planned 1,694 kilometer long 6-lane Peshawar-Karachi motorway is 296-kilometer Sukkur-Hyderabad M6 motorway. Growing network of high-speed motorways is opening up  less developed parts  of the country for investment, business and  tourism . It is aiding agriculture, trade and commerce by moving freight and people faster. Transport sector is part of the  service sector  which constitutes 54% of the national economy. Service sector includes education, health, financial services, legal services, communication services, hotels, restaurants, recreation, entertainment, retail and wholesale, personal services, etc. It is growing faster than industry (26%) and agriculture (20%) sectors. ...

Researchers at Europe's Disinfo Lab have uncovered a network of 265 online news sites in 65 countries, including Pakistan, using the names and brands of defunct newspapers from the 20th century to push  anti-Pakistan  media coverage inside the regular news cycle. Two of these sites are located in Pakistani cities of Karachi and Lahore, according to Disinfo Lab's report. They are linked to  social media accounts .  These two sites were spewing disinformation on Pakistan using the names of the long defunct Socialist Weekly (Karachi) and Khalsa Akhbar (Lahore), according to  Pakistani researchers .  The real Karachi-based Urdu language Socialist Weekly and Lahore-based Punjabi language Khalsa Akhbar ceased publishing decades ago, long before the advent of online publishing. Two of 265 Anti-Pakistan Websites in Pakistan. Source: EU Disinfo Lab The fake news sites were aimed at reinforcing the legitimacy of anti-Pakistan  NGOs  by providing lin...

November 9, 2019 will go down in South Asian history as a day of sharp contrasts: While Pakistan restored and opened Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur for Sikh pilgrims, the Indian Supreme Court ordered the construction of a Hindu temple on the site where Babri Masjid stood for centuries. Can India and its western apologists still claim to have shared values? Shared Values: At a congressional hearing on the Capitol Hill in Washington in October, 2019, American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar asked Ms. Alice Wells, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, the following pertinent  question : " Kashmiris  have been restricted from communicating outside their country for  50+ days . In Assam, almost 2 million people are being asked to prove their citizenship. This is how the Rohingya genocide started. At what point do we question whether PM Modi shares our values?" The question of shared values has been forcefully answered in the negative by the Indian Supreme Cou...

Only 18% of Pakistanis and 19% of Indians under the age of 24 have the skills required for  21st century jobs , according to a  United Nations and Business Coalition for Education study . It's the percentage of all school age children on track to complete secondary AND reach the learning benchmarks spelled out  by National Achievement Test (NAT) 2016 for Pakistan  and NCERT 2017 for India. South Asian economies have experienced some of the fastest  growth rates  in the world. They are driven by young and growing populations in the region. Sustaining growth will become increasingly difficult unless significant investments are made to prepare South Asian youth for 21st century jobs. Today, South Asia is home to the largest number of young people of any global region, with almost half of its population of 1.9 billion below the age of 24, according to data produced by the Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Education), the Education Commission, an...

Karachi-born Pakistani Syed Sumail Hasan, 19, is the world's youngest video gamer to surpass $1 million in earnings. In fact, he has earned $3.6 million so far as an international Dota 2 player, ranking him the 10th biggest winner in the world, according to esportsearnings.com website which tracks players' earnings. Sumail started playing Dota 2 at the age of 7. He now lives in a Chicago suburb as a permanent resident of the United States. Syed Sumail Hassan Arsalan Ash Siddique, 23 years old player from Lahore, Pakistan, caused a stir in Fukuoka Japan when he defeated world's top players to win EVO championship in February, 2019, according to  Asahi Shimbun . In his victory speech, Arslan acknowledged many unknown Pakistani players who are also quite strong but could not join the competition because they could not get the visa to travel to Japan. It wasn't easy for Arsalan to reach Japan to participate in the contest. He had to jump through many hoops a...

Economic mobility across generations, also known as intergenerational mobility (IGM), is a key measure of human progress. It shows that Pakistan is doing relatively well, according to a World Bank sponsored study. The analysis examines whether those born in poverty or in prosperity are destined to remain in the same economic circumstances into which they were born, and looks back over a half a century at whether children’s lives are better or worse than their parents’ in different parts of the world. Inter-Generational Income Mobility Map of the World 2018. Source: World Bank Intergenerational Income Mobility Study: The World Bank study uses a newly created 2018 database—the Global Database of Intergenerational Mobility (GDIM)—that covers more than 95 percent of the global population.  Intergenerational income mobility measures how children's incomes compare with their parents' incomes at similar stages of life over a period of 50 years. Inter-Generational Income I...