South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan has emerged as the country with the highest percentage of Highly Cited Papers compared with the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the last 10 years, according to Thomson Reuters. Pakistan has doe so despite the fact that its "R&D environment faced substantial economic challenges". Source: Thomson Reuters In a report titled " Pakistan: Another BRIC in the Wall ", author Lulian Herciu says that Pakistan’s scientific productivity has quadrupled, from approximately 2,000 articles per year in 2006 to more than 9,000 articles in 2015. During this time, the number of Highly Cited Papers featuring Pakistan-based authors increased tenfold, from 9 articles in 2006 to 98 in 2015. Source: Thomson Reuters The author asserts that his report provides comparisons between Pakistan and BRIC nations taking a look at productivity and leveraging contextual indicators. His analysis points to the fact that Pakistan can be benchmarked with emergin...

In his recently published book "The Growth Map" , Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill of BRIC fame has reiterated Pakistan's long term growth prospects as part of the Next 11 (N-11) group of nations which includes Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, South Korea, and Vietnam. Goldman Sachs has recently launched an N-11 equity fund (GSYAX) to enable investors to take advantage of growth in the Next-11 group of nations. Answering a reporter's question about the growth prospects of GCC (oil-rich nations of Gulf Cooperation Council) at a recent investment conference in Dubai, he said: "Some GCC countries are well placed to be hubs for the BRIC and N-11-influenced world. I often think of Dubai as a kind of N-11 center, even the capital of the N-11 world, given its business adjacency to Egypt, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and, of course, India and Russia." While the primary criterion used by Goldman Sachs for membership o...

For at least two years in a row, BRIC has, in the words of SGS's Albert Edwards, stood for Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept , not an acronym for populous emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China as Goldman Sachs' Jim O'Neill saw it ten years ago. In fact, O'Neill has himself expressed disappointment in India, one of the BRICs, a designation that has boosted foreign investment in India and helped accelerate its economic growth since 2001. "All four countries have become bigger (economies) than I said they were going to be, even Russia. However there are important structural issues about all four and as we go into the 10-year anniversary, in some ways India is the most disappointing," said O'Neill as quoted by Reuters . Noting India's significant dependence on foreign capital inflows , Jim O'Neill went further and raised a concern about the potential for current account crisis. "India has the risk of ... if they're not careful...

Pakistan's main stock market ended 2010 with a 28 percent annual gain, driven by foreign buying mainly in the energy sector, despite concerns about the country's macroeconomic indicators after summer floods , according to Reuters . Although it was less than half of the 63% gain recorded in 2009, it is still an impressive rise in KSE-100 index when compared favorably with the performance of Mumbai(+17%) and Shanghai(-14.3%) key indexes. Among other BRICs, Brazil is up just 1% for the year, and the dollar-traded Russian RTS index rose 22% in the year, reaching a 16-month closing high of 1,769.57 on Tuesday, while the rouble-based MICEX is also up 22%. Pakistan's key share index KSE-100 was just over 1000 points at the end of 1999, and it closed at 12022.46 on Dec 31, 2010, sgnificantly outperforming BRIC markets for the decade . Pakistan rupee remained quite stable at 60 rupees to a US dollar until 2008, slipping only recently to a range of 80-85 rupees to a dollar. In spit...

India's rapid economic growth has brought it enormous positive attention of the world media, billions of dollars in foreign investments, and new-found status on the international diplomatic scene. Goldman Sachs has promoted it by coining the term "BRIC" which groups India with other major emerging markets like Brazil, China and Russia as an investment destination. Inclusion in G20 has put the Indian leaders alongside the world's richest G7 nations. Indian business leaders in partnership with India's planning commission have mounted unprecedented " India Everywhere " branding campaign at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland each year. Indian writers have been promoting "Chindia" which seeks to put India on an equal footing with China. Goldman Sachs has clearly contributed to the euphoria about India, by projecting that its economy could be 50 times its 2006 size by 2050, which would make it the world's third largest, after Chi...

Karachi shares market significantly outperformed Mumbai in the last ten years. But this fact is not enough to get any positive attention from Fareed Zakaria, India's best-known cheerleader in the West. As expected, Fareed Zakaria's discussion of " The Rise of the Rest " sings praises of the BRIC nations, particularly mentioning his native India in the most glowing terms. There is nothing wrong with that, except that Zakaria omits any positive mention of India's neighbor Pakistan in the context of economic performance in the decade of 1999-2009 , and chooses to strike familiar themes of "Islamic jihadists" and "terrorism" when he does make any references to Pakistan. What Zakaria has omitted is the story of the extraordinary returns Pakistan has produced for investors. Pakistan's key share index KSE-100 was just over 1000 points at the end of 1999, and it closed at over 9727.40 on Dec 31, 2009. Pakistan rupee remained quite stable at 60 rup...

Pakistan's KSE-100 stock index surged 55% in 2009, a year that also saw the South Asian nation wracked by increased violence and its state institutions described by various media talking heads as being on the verge of collapse . Even more surprising is the whopping 825% increase in KSE-100 from 1999 to 2009, which makes it a significantly better performer than the BRIC nations . BRIC darling China has actually underperformed its peers, rising only 150 percent compared with energy-rich Brazil (520 percent) and Russia (326 percent) or well-regulated India (274 percent), which some investors see as a safer and more diverse bet compared with the Chinese equity market, which is dominated by bank stocks. This is the kind of performance that has got the attention of some of the top investors and investment firms around the world. Not only has Goldman Sachs reaffirmed Pakistan's place on the list of its top 15 emerging economies for 2010, smart international investment gurus are inv...

While India leads the world in total number of murders, South Africa is number one by per capita murder rate. The top five countries by total number of homicides are India, Russia, Colombia, South Africa and United States, according to Nationmaster.com. Based on murders per 1000 people, India ranks at 26 along with Yemen while Saudi Arabia and Qatar have the lowest murder rates ranking them at 61 and 62 respectively on a list of 62 countries. Though Pakistan is not included in this list, its per capita rate of 0.0602 per 1000 would put it at number 20 along with Poland and just slightly above the US which is at number 24. Pakistan's murder rate is also well below the weighted average of 0.1 per 1000 reported for the world by NationMaster.com. There were 32,719 incidents (Nationmaster puts it at 37,170) of murder recorded in India, whereas there were 28,904 in Russia, 26,539 in Colombia, 21,995 in South Africa, 16,692 in the US, 13,829 in Mexico and 9,631 in Pakistan, the report com...

The booming Bombay stock market in 2007 and the benefits of globalization have seen India's billionaires list swell to 40 on the Forbes Billionaires List. The Indian billionaires combined wealth has more than doubled from $170 billion to $351 billion in 2007. While Bill Gates has slipped to number three spot from number one, the number 4, 5, 6 and 8 spots in the top 10 are now occupied by Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani and KP Singh from India. The news of the newly-minted Indian billionaires is bringing sharper focus on the growing rich-poor gap in India. The Times of India reports Communist Party leader Sitaram Yechury claiming that on the one hand, 36 Indian billionaires constituted 25% of India’s GDP while on the other, 70% of Indians had to do with Rs 20 a day. "A farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. The gap between the two Indias is widening," he said. The growing wealth gap is also a big concern in other BRIC countries such as China and Russia. Fully...