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...

COP27, the United Nations climate summit,  opened in Egypt on Sunday with the addition of negotiations over funding to compensate nations for “loss and damage” as an official agenda item. Pakistan led the push for it with the support of 134 developing nations. Discussions at  COP26  in Scotland were mainly focused on funding "mitigation" and "adaptation", not compensation for "loss and damage".   Pakistan Pavilion at COP27 Conference in Sharm Al-Sheikh, Egypt The "loss and damage" agenda item was proposed by Pakistan during talks at Bonn after the country suffered heavy losses in unprecedented floods that hit a third of the country.  “My country, Pakistan, has seen floods that have left 33 million lives in tatters and have caused loss and damage amounting to 10% of the GDP,” said Ambassador Munir Akram, the 2022 chair of the G77—a group of 134 developing countries, at the opening session of COP27 at Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt.  Cumulative CO2 Emissio...

Multiple polls over the years have found that the Pakistani military has traditionally enjoyed widespread  popular support  in the country. This support has been particularly strong among the urban middle class Pakistanis who have now become the backbone of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party which has accused the Pakistani military of orchestrating an assassination attempt against the former Prime Minister. The events of the last several months, particularly this week's assassination attempt on the PTI chief's life, are forcing the people to choose sides. By-election results and huge attendance of the PTI rallies confirm that most of the people are supporting  Imran Khan  over the military.   Pakistan's Ex PM Imran Khan and Current Army Chief General Bajwa Some Pakistani political analysts have long speculated about the possibility of the loss of public support for the Pakistani military.  Back in 2019, I met  Sohail Warraich , a se...

Gallup Law and Order Survey 2021 shows that Pakistan (score 82) is safer than Bangladesh (79) and India (80) and Sri Lanka (80).  Gallup’s survey is based on responses to four questions to measure “people’s sense of personal security and their personal experiences with crime and law enforcement”. The questions are as follows: 1) In the city or area where you live, do you have confidence in the local police force?; 2) Do you feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where you live?; 3) Within the last 12 months, have you had money or property stolen from you or another household member?; 4) Within the past 12 months, have you been assaulted or mugged?  Gallup interviewed 127,000 people in 120 countries to compile the report. Gallup Law and Order Survey Results 2022. Source: Gallup The survey, conducted by global analytics firm Gallup, ranks Singapore, Tajikistan, Norway, Switzerland and Indonesia as the safest countries in the world.  It ranks Sierra Leone,...

Over 75% of the world's poor deprived of basic living standards (nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing) live in India compared to 4.6% in Bangladesh and 4.1% in Pakistan, according to a recently released OPHI/UNDP report on multidimensional poverty.  Here's what the report says: "More than 45.5 million poor people are deprived in only these four indicators (nutrition, cooking fuel, sanitation and housing). Of those people, 34.4 million live in India, 2.1 million in Bangladesh and 1.9 million in Pakistan—making this a predominantly South Asian profile".  Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2022. Source: OPHI/UNDP Income Poverty in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Source: Our World in Data The  UNDP poverty report  shows that the income poverty (people living on $1.90 or less per day) in Pakistan is 3.6% while it is 22.5% in India and 14.3% in Bangladesh. In terms of the population vulnerable to multidimensional poverty, Pakistan (12.9%) does better than Ban...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has pursued a policy of internationally isolating Pakistan for the last 8 years. Indian diplomats and mainstream media have engaged in a concerted campaign to hurt Pakistan diplomatically and economically during this period. Even the sport of cricket has not been spared.  All of the available evidence suggests that this Indian campaign has failed.   Pakistan PM with Other World Leaders at SCO Summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Source: Xinhua A prominent Indian journalist Shekhar Gupta has recently summarized the reasons for the Modi government's failure to achieve its objectives relative to Pakistan. Gupta argues that Pakistan is too important to be ignored or isolated by the international community. He says, "Pakistan is too big in terms of population, too powerful militarily, too Muslim, too nuclear and too  well located  to be isolated".  Pakistan PM Shahbaz Sharif with President and Mrs. Biden. Source: Whit...