South Asia Investor Review

"We are in Zelenskyy’s shoes now", read a recent  headline  in a major Indian newspaper. There are similar concerns being raised in other world capitals in Asia and Europe after President Donald Trump's decisions to cut military supplies and stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine following a White House summit with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine who is facing the military might of Russia on the battlefield in Europe.     From L to R: Putin, Trump, Xi and Modi “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA,” said Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor-elect. Singapore Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said the  US has “changed from liberator to great disruptor to a landlord seeking rent”. The events of last week have revived the memory of a quote attributed to former US Secretary of State Dr. Henry Kissinger who is reported to have said: "The word will go...

Per capita milk consumption in Pakistan reached 231 liters (231 Kg) in 2019, according to a new  research report  entitled ‘Asia – Whole Fresh Milk – Market Analysis, Forecast, Size, Trends and Insights’. It has almost doubled from  119 liters per person  in 2011. Milk production in Pakistan is the second highest in Asia and the third highest in the world.  Per capita milk consumption of 231 kg in Pakistan is the third highest in Asia, behind Uzbekistan's 339 Kg and Turkey's 281 Kg, according to the  IndexBox report .  Top Milk Producing Countries. Source: FAO Milk Production: Pakistan produced 47 million tons of milk in 2019, the third largest in the world after top-ranked India's 198 million tons and the United States' 100 million tons. Pakistan’s milk production is projected to increase by an average of 3% a year due to an increase in the herd population. According to FAO projections, Asian production is expected to increase by 2% in 2020 due to ex...

‘Digital Silk Road’ project is one of 12 sub-themes agreed to at the recently concluded  Belt Road Forum 2019 (BRF19)  in Beijing. This state-of-the-art information superhighway will involve laying fiber optic cables in Pakistan which will connect with China in the north and link with Africa and the Arab World via undersea cable to be laid from Gwadar Deep Sea Port built as part of  China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) . The global project will include 5G wireless networks deployment in BRI (Belt Road Initiative) member nations. China-Pakistan Fiber Optic Cable Route Fiber Optic Cables: The laying of 820 kilometer long China-Pakistan  fiber optic cable  has already been laid between the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan in the south and the Khunjerab Pass, China in the north  and operational since July, 2018. By 2020, the 6,299 kilometers of underwater cables will extend to Djibouti from Gwadar and form the Digital Silk Route between Asia and Afric...

British ranking agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has ranked 23 Pakistani universities among the top 500 Asian universities for 2019, up from 16 in 2018.  Other South Asian universities figuring in the QS top universities report are 75 from India, 6 from Bangladesh and 4 from Sri Lanka. Top 500 Asian Universities. Source: QS University Rankings 2019 South Asia Ranking: In terms of the number of universities ranking in  Asia's top 500 , Pakistan with its 23 universities ranks second in South Asia and 7th among 17 Asian nations topped by China with 112, Japan 89, India 75, South Korea 57, Taiwan 36, Malaysia 26, Pakistan 23, Indonesia 22, Thailand 19, Philippines 8, Hong Kong 7, Vietnam 7, Bangladesh 6, Sri Lanka 4, Singapore 3, Macao 2 and Brunei 2. National University of Singapore ranked number one in Asia followed by University of Hong Kong and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Tsinghua University and Peking University—both from China—round off the top f...

Asia 2025, a US Defense Department Study produced in summer of 1999, forecast that Pakistan would "disappear" as an independent state by 2015.  Since the issuance of this dire forecast, Pakistan has not only survived but its economy has nearly quintupled from $62 billion in 1999 to over $300 billion in 2018. This has happened in spite of political corruption and instability and terror Pakistan has suffered from due to the Afghan war next door and Indian sponsored proxy war against it. US Department of Defense Summer Study 1999 Dire Forecasts: The US DoD 1999 forecast was not the first nor would it be the last dire prediction by western and Indian "scholars" working in the American academia and Washington think tanks. Many western and Indian analysts have been forecasting Pakistan's demise as the country struggles to deal with terrorism at home. Among them is former President George W. Bush's adviser  David Kilcullen . "We're now rea...

There is increasing recognition in Pakistan and other nations colonized in the past by the West of the need to " decolonize knowledge " and to deal with the entrenched "injustices inherited" from colonial masters. Language is being recognized as a "library of ideas" essential for creation and transmission of knowledge in former colonies. Habib University Conference: Habib University, Pakistan's leading liberal arts institution of higher learning, is leading the way forward with "Postcolonial Higher Education Conference (PHEC)", an annual conference held each year at the university's Karachi campus since 2014. The conference attracts scholars from around the world. This year’s PHEC's theme was “Inheritance of Injustice” to highlight the results of historical injustices seen today in many facets across the world, from economic and ecological to geo-political, according to report in Newsline Magazine .  The conference featured ...

A Transparency International (TI) study of 16 Asian countries, including  India  and  Pakistan , has found that India has the highest bribery rate.  69% of survey respondents in India said they have paid a bribe, given a gift or done a favor to receive government services like education and health care. Vietnam follows with 65%, Thailand 41% and Pakistan 40%. China reported a much lower 26%. Corruption in Asia. Source: Transparency International 2017 The Transparency International study released in March 2017 is part of a regional series for the  Global Corruption Barometer .  22,000 people participated in the survey to answer questions about their recent experiences with corruption in 16 countries and territories in the Asia Pacific region. The study found that Japan has the lowest incidence of bribery at 0.2 per cent. South Korea and Australia recorded 3% each, Hong Kong 2% and Taiwan 6%. While 46% to 60% of Indians say they paid bribes for vari...

The latest edition of the world's top universities from The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) has few surprises in 2009. The top 10 Universities are: Harvard (US), Cambridge (UK), Yale(US), UCL, London (UK), Imperial College, London and Oxford (both UK, joint 5), Chicago (US), Princeton (US), MIT, Massachusetts (US) and California Institute of Technology (US). As always, the top of the list is dominated by American and British Universities this year, together making up about 40% of the entire list of 200. The US universities account for more than a quarter, while the UK institutions make up about 15% of the top 200 universities. Outside of the US and the UK, there is fair representation of Australian, Canadian and European institutions and a smattering of Asian universities from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Singapore and Malaysia. A US publication, US News & World Report, also published its ranking of the world's top universities in June, this year. USN&WR r...

As President Obama plans to meet Latin America's leaders this weekend, China has recently negotiated deals to double a development fund in Venezuela to $12 billion, lend Ecuador at least $1 billion to build a hydroelectric plant, provide Argentina with access to more than $10 billion in Chinese currency and lend Brazil’s national oil company $10 billion. The deals largely focus on China locking in natural resources like oil for years to come, according to the New York Times . As a result of rapidly growing ties and trade, China has already become Latin America's second largest trading partner after the United States. Beyond locking in the natural resources for its growing industries and developing new export markets, China is also focusing on expanding its own internal consumption of products it produces. Already, China has surpassed the United States as the largest automobile market in the world. In comparison with the rest of the world, the Chinese market for automobiles appe...

The world's GDP in 2009 will shrink for the first time since WWII, according to the World Bank. Poor developing nations will be particularly hard hit with a shortfall of $270 billion to $700 billion, which will set them back by many years. Many of these nations are looking for help from the traditional donors in the West. But the West itself is preoccupied by its economic woes , with tent cities popping up all over the United States as home foreclosures rise. According to the latest estimates of the World Bank, almost 40 percent of 107 developing countries are highly exposed to the poverty effects of the current economic crisis, less than 10 percent face little risk and the remainder are moderately exposed. Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan are ranked among the 43 countries most exposed to poverty risks, raising the horrible specter of further political instability and dangerous social strife in a very important region of the world. As one of the developing nations facing a s...