South Asia Investor Review

Nearly 700,000 Pakistanis have left to work overseas in the first 10 months of the current calendar year, according to Pakistan's Bureau of Emigration Overseas Employment ( BEOE ). The worker migration from Pakistan had dipped to 225,000 in 2020 and 280,000 in 2021 due to Covid restrictions around the world. The yearly average for the last decade was over half a million Pakistanis migrating to other countries for work.  In August this year, the State Bank of Pakistan said in its " Half Year Report 2021-22 " that “(t)he monthly flow of Pakistani workers (overseas) has reverted to pre-Covid levels (of 65,000 per month).” The data from International Organization for Migration ( IOM ) shows that a lot more of the Pakistan migrants are now skilled labor while the share of unskilled migrants is declining: "Pakistani migrant workers were skilled (42%) and involved in semi-skilled jobs such as welders, secretaries, masons, carpenters, plumbers and so on. Another proportion o...

The global population increased by one billion over the last 12 years to reach 8 billion this year, according to the United Nations. Pakistan contributed 49 million people to the last billion, making it the fourth largest contributor after India (177 million), China (73 million) and Nigeria (51 million). Nigeria is expected to soon overtake Indonesia and Pakistan to become the world's 4th most populous nation. More than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. Rising working age population is turning Pakistan into a major global consumer market. It is also fueling Pakistan's growing surplus labor exports and record overseas worker remittances.  Pakistan Among Top 4 Contributors to Last Billion Population. Source: UN/Worldometers World Population Visualization in 2022. Source: Visu...