South Asia Investor Review

Pakistan is among the biggest contributors to the 8 million tons of plastic waste that is dumped into the world's oceans every year, says a United Nations Report released on World Environment Day. This year's theme is 'beat plastic pollution'. While disposable plastic bags, bottles and straws are used for a brief time and then thrown away, it takes hundreds of years to decompose them. Fortunately, a Pakistani scientist has discovered a plastic eating microbe to accelerate this degradation process. While it is too early to measure its impact, it could likely prove to be major savior of the planet from growing plastic pollution. Indus River Plastic Pollution: A recent  study  by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research based in Leipzig, Germany says that 90% of plastic flowing into oceans can be traced to 10 rivers. The Indus ranks second on the list, according to  media reports . One of Asia's largest rivers, it flows through parts of  India and Pakistan...

Alibaba Group (BABA.N) has bought the entire share capital of ecommerce platform Daraz, Rocket Internet said, according to  Reuters . American ecommerce giant Amazon is already in Pakistan via its investment in another ecommerce platform Clicky.pk. Daraz, founded in Pakistan in 2012, operates online marketplaces in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The unit will continue to operate under the same brand following the sale to Alibaba, Rocket said. Online sales in Pakistan's $152 billion retail market are doubling every year,  according to Adam Dawood of Yayvo online portal. He expects them to  pass $1 billion  in the current fiscal year (2017-18), two years earlier than the previous forecast. Media  reports  suggest global e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com could purchase substantial stake in Pakistan's  e-commerce  site  Clicky.pk. Amazon's Presence in Pakistan: Amazon already owns about 33% stake in Clicky.pk throug...

Surging demand for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) in Pakistan is attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of new investments.  Expanding middle class , particularly millennials with rising disposable incomes, is demanding branded and packaged consumer goods ranging from personal and baby care items to food and beverage products.  Rapid growth in sales of consumer products and services is driving other sectors, including retail, e-commerce, paper and packaging,  advertising , media, sports and entertainment. Planet Retail estimates Pakistan's current retail market  size at $152 billion . It is forecast to expand 8.2% a year through 2016-2021 as average disposable income has doubled since 2010, according to research group Euromonitor International as reported by  Bloomberg News . New FMCG Investments: Dutch consumer giant Unilever has announced plans to invest  $120 million  to expand its operations in Pakistan. Turkish multinational Haya...

"In terms of LSM growth, a number of sectors that are showing strong performance; (for example, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector; plastic products; buses and trucks; and even textiles), are either under reported, or not even covered. The omission of such important sectors from official data coverage, probably explains the apparent disconnect between overall economic activity in the country and the hard numbers in LSM."  State Bank of Pakistan Annual Report 2014 Economists have long argued that Pakistan's official GDP figures significantly understate real economic activity in terms of both production and consumption. M. Ali Kemal and Ahmed Waqar Qasim, economists at Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE),   explored several published different approaches for  sizing Pakistan's underground economy  and settled on a combination of  PSLM ( Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement ) consumption data  and mis-invoicing of...

Away from the violence and the troubles of the big cities, the economy of rural Pakistan is booming. Flush with cash from bumper crops at record commodity prices, the farmers are spending on tractors , cars , motorcycles , mobile phones, personal grooming items, packaged foods and beverages and other consumer products like never before. Higher crop prices have increased farmers’ incomes in Pakistan by Rs. 342 billion in the 12 months through June, according to a government economic survey. That was higher than the gain of Rs. 329 billion in the preceding eight years, according to a report by Bloomberg News . Companies like Millat tractors , Honda Atlas Motorcycles , Pak Suzuki Motors, Engro Foods, Telnor, Nestle, Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor and Gamble and Unilever have been big beneficiaries of the current rural consumption boom. Nestle Pakistan's chief Ian Donald has summed up the rising demand for his company's products as follows: “It’s a common perception that China an...