South Asia Investor Review

Is Bangladesh's officially reported GDP figure credible? Do consumption figures support Bangladesh's claim of higher per capita  income  than India and Pakistan?  Is it the recent  rebasing of GDP  that boosted Bangladesh's per capita income above India's and Pakistan's? If Bangladesh has higher GDP per capita, why is its per capita consumption of  energy , cement and steel so much lower than India's and Pakistan's? Does Pakistan really have a much larger informal economy than Bangladesh or India do? How long has it been since Pakistan rebased its GDP calculations? Is there a lot more currency in circulation in Pakistan than in Bangladesh and India? Let us try and answer these questions!  Rebasing GDP: Bangladesh just rebased its GDP in 2020-21 to year 2015-16. This has boosted its per capita income by double digits for every year since 2015-16.  Bangladesh's per capita income for the 2015-16 fiscal year has now gone up to $1,737 from $1,465 in th...

President Joseph R. Biden's climate policy has recently triggered rumors in right-wing American media of a potential burger ban in America. Such speculations about beef ban have been categorically denied by Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). However, there are reasons to believe that the Biden focus on r enewable energy  alone will not be enough to achieve his ambitious targets. The current  food production  methods, particularly the beef industry, will also have to be fundamentally redesigned to meet Biden's climate goal of  50-52% reduction  in carbon emissions by 2030. Other industrial processes that will need fundamental rethink to reduce emissions include production of cement, steel and plastics. Dealing with these challenges will require a lot of innovation and new technologies. It presents an opportunity for technology entrepreneurs to reshape the world yet again.   Meatless Meat Products Impact of Meat Produc...

Pakistan’s IT exports increased by 44% during the first quarter (July, August and September) of the fiscal year 2020-21, according to a tweet by Razzak Dawood, Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan. Pharmaceutical exports saw 22.6% increase in the same period over last year.  Pakistan's information technology and pharmaceutical exports are soaring by double digits amid the COVID pandemic, much faster than the overall exports.  Razzak Dawood on IT Exports Technology Exports:  "I am glad to note that our exports of Telecommunication & IT Services have done very well during the period Jul-Sep of this Financial Year (FY). The exports have grown by 41% to USD 444 million as compared to USD 315 million in the corresponding period in the last FY", Mr. Dawood tweeted today .   In Fiscal Year 2019-20 ending in June, 2020, the Information Telecommunication (IT) and IT enabled Services (ITeS) export remittances surged 23.71% to $1.230 billion from $994.848 millio...

Pakistan's rank as world's leading cement producer will rise from 16th in 2018 to 6th by 2030. It will replace Japan among the world's top 10 cement producing nations in 2030, according to  World Cement Association forecast . Cement consumption is an important indicator of development activity and economic growth. Pakistan's domestic cement sales are continuing to grow, up 9.2% in October, 2019 from the same month last year. Total sales (local and export) in 4-month period between July and October 2019 stood at 16.117 million tons, 4.5 per cent higher than 15.419 million tons during the same period last year. Source: World Cement Association Last year, Pakistan produced 41.14 million tons of cement, according to  International Cement Review . The country's cement industry has already built capacity to produce  59.5 million tons  in anticipation of future demand for housing and infrastructure.  World Cement Association expects Pakistan to produce 85 million tons,...

Steel production in Pakistan jumped 39.3% to 5 million tons last year, according to  World Steel Association . Earlier, Pakistan steel industry ramped up its output from 2.9 million tons in 2015 to 3.6 million tons in 2016. While Pakistan's steel production growth is the world's fastest,  its relatively small steel production volume of  5 million tons  ranks it 28th in the world. Other nations seeing strong growth in steel production are Iran (up 21.4%), Vietnam ( 31.9%) and Egypt (35%).   Iran ranks 13th with 21.7 million tons; Vietnam ranks 19th with 10.3 million tons; Egypt ranks 23rd with 6.8 million tons produced in 2017. Some of the key names ramping up  production capacity  in Pakistan are Aisha Steel Mill (ASM),  Amreli Steels and Agha Steel Industries. ASM, an Arif Habib Group company, is planning to  expand capacity  to a total of 700,000 tons a year from its current capacity of 220,000 tons. Amreli Steels Limite...

Pakistan's domestic cement consumption reached 35 million tons in 2016, up from 30 million tons in 2015, according to a report published by  Global Cement .  Using the latest census population of 207 million, it works out to about 170 Kg per person consumption. The increase is driven by a combination of CPEC-related infrastructure projects as well as commercial and  housing construction . Pakistan Cement Sales. Source: Global Cement While domestic demand for cement is continuing its upward trend, the exports have suffered a major decline. In 2009, the exports hit a high of over 11 million tons, constituting 34% of all cement dispatches at the time. Since then, they have fallen to below 6 million tons or 14% of all sales. Pakistan  cement industry  is booming. There is some disagreement about where the biggest demand is coming from.  The CEO of Thatta Cement says it is 60% infrastructure and 40% housing but others say it is 70% housing and 30% infr...