Gone are the days when women have to concentrate much time on household chores, specially cooking? Now housewives are generally had opportunity to do other works instead of cooking only. Numerous fast food offers has given the break to many house women’s pain and stress of cooking for the whole family, every time as there are plenty of fast food items they one can order according to the need and time. Obviously involvement in such activities considerably reduced time spent in the kitchen by women which paved the way for frozen food to their kitchen. Moreover, with an increase in…
Author: Khawaja Amer
Webinar on ‘Halal Industry in Pakistan: Potential and Challenges’ organised very recently by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), has rightly pointed out that the volume of global Halal food trade is more than $3 trillion though Pakistan’s share is barely 0.25 percent and there is a need to increase. As such there is a need to increase Pakistan’s Halal food production and exports of semi-cooked meat, which holds high demand in China and other Far East countries. The government and private sector must take proactive initiatives to explore the true potential of ‘Made in Pakistan’…
Speaking at the recent launch of a new financing programme titled “Women Ventures” (WV) by Karandaaz Pakistan, in collaboration with the UK Department for International Development (DFID), aimed at improving access to finance for women-led businesses, former State Bank Governor Shamshad Akhtar, also Karandaaz Chairperson, said; “only 8 percent of micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners were women their access to finance is 6 percent and only 1 percent of women are engaged in entrepreneurial activities as opposed to 21 percent men.” On the contrary the total number of women entrepreneurs in Bangladesh is above 10 percent. Not only…
The Punjab government deserves some commendation for initiating a digital solution to strengthen its wheat monitoring and regulation mechanism, and to prevent hoarding and price hike. According to a report published in local English daily, the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) has developed software to help the province’s food authorities to track and regulate wheat and flour delivery in the open market. Though, a good initiative, this will not benefit farmers, the key stakeholders in food. Thus there is a need, keeping in view the latest trends, to digitize the basic farming — the core activity of the agriculture sector.…
Pakistan is passing through an unprecedented crisis and being a Third World Country it is impossible to control the pandemic with the available government means. In a time of such devastation, entrepreneurs of goodwill and generosity should get united, regardless of their differences with the government policies and divert their total allocation for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in their company’s 2020-2021 budget, exclusively to fight COVID-19 instead of other initiatives like environment, education, clean water etc. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is threatening our economy, it is high time for the corporates in Pakistan to rise to the…
The budget proposals for 2020-2021, prepared by the Adviser on Finance and Revenue, Dr. Hafeez Shaikh — against the backdrop of potentially the biggest public health emergency and economic downturn in generations — and presented on the floor of the House by Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar, boldly announced, “There are no new taxes in this budget.” This could be termed as an activity of an ordinary salesman rather than that of a hardcore finance manager. He was sounding as if the Pakistan economy was flying on animal spirits: he presented a fiscal plan based on irrational calculations…
As we are set to transform Pakistan in to Riyasat-i-Madina there is a need to discuss the future of Islamic Financial Institutions (IFI), specifically Takaful. Islamic finance has developed mainly in two sectors i.e. Islamic banking and Islamic insurance (Takaful). According to a State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) report Islamic banking industry constituted 15 percent share by the end of March 2019 while according to the Association of Islamic Banking and Financial Institutions Malaysia (AIBIM) Islamic banking industry in Malaysia to have 40 percent market share in total banking assets by 2020. As we see Islamic banking is slowly picking…
Exports play an important role in a country’s economy, influencing the level of economic growth, employment and the balance of payments. The fundamental relation between economic growth and exports has long been a subject of discussion and debate among economists, the public sector and trade professionals. They believe that export growth is one of the main indicators of economic growth in production and employment. This is called the Export-led Growth (ELG) hypothesis. Do our finance managers believe in ELG and is the tax regime prepared by them fair enough for local entrepreneurs to grow and become exporting entities? To find…
Fund raising for Diamer-Bhasha Dam is fine but instead of waiting — at least for a decade, for its commissioning without exploring other options sounds incomprehensible. Something must be done as soon as possible to respond to the looming water crisis. And to begin with the government should immediately address the issue plaguing the water sector i.e. lack of governance, lacunae in water management system which includes criminal losses, inefficiency, unreliability, tanker mafia, corruption and of course utter mismanagement. It goes without saying that when you have insufficient resources and increasing demands, solution has to be sought from within the…
There is a general consensus among the business community that the PTI government should have taken Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) and other stakeholders on board before announcing the Supplementary Finance Bill. They, very rightly argue that industrialization requires long term financing usually from the private sector and as such there is a need to consult the business community in the decision making process of economic or fiscal policies. In this connection addition of some members from the business community in Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (EAC) will definitely be good step and help the government…
The first phase of 10-year Pakistan-China Free Trade Agreement (FTA) executed in 2007 failed in achieving the desired results because the Agreement did not take into account the ground realities. Therefore, at present, the exports of Pakistan to China stands at US$2 billion while import from China at US$18 billion, widening Pakistan’s trade deficit with China to US$16 billion, though the purpose of this phase of FTA initiated in 2006 was to increase the exports of both countries. It may also be mentioned here that the benefit ratio between the two countries is simply amazing. In the first phase, Pakistan…
Keeping in view the current economic scenario there is a need to do something on war footing and encouragingly enough there seems to be a ray of hope when we see that the most creditable part of the 100 days plan of the prime minister Imran Khan is of course to build a Council of Business Leaders (CBL) which he would like to chair himself so that effective and practicable measures can be taken to improve the conditions of doing business in Pakistan, attract investment, encourage participation of overseas Pakistanis and boost exports — vital components to revitalize the economy.…