Everyone having some interest in the economic matters must have heard economists saying that the construction industry set in motion 40 allied industries. This is a tested hypothesis and easily traceable in correlation between sales of cement, a most important constituent of the construction industry, and economic growth. Because of this representative nature of the cement, I call it ‘poster commodity’ of the construction industry. Global cement industry is among the initial industrial sectors to recover from the adverse effects of the Covid-19. Pakistan cement industry is not an exception to this and recovered with a growth of about 20…
Author: Muhammad Nadeem Malik
Everyone knows the famous adage from Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, “What’s in a name? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” However, in the modern business world, the name matters. It is the name, which becomes brand and then preference of the customers buying it. Even the staple products are not an exception to this branding and people mostly buy names and not the product. It may be easy to apprehend the importance of the brand name while buying high value items like electronics, equipment, machinery, vehicles etc.However, when it comes to basic needs like milk…
Industrialization and growing consumerism have led to the need for developing an effective transportation system. Key to the success of any product or services lies inease of its availability for the user. A high quality product or service that is not accessible when required by the potential customer is bound to fail. It is as important, if not more, to identify and develop the best logistics system, as is the product design, manufacturing equipment and human resource. Logistics is about planning and executing how the resources are acquired, stored and then the finished product or service is transported and made…
The outbreak of pandemic COVID-19 in 2020 was not only unexpected but also a surprise for the world. The COVID-19 has deep long-lasting impact on every sphere of life extending from social to cultural and economic spheres. As this is highly contagious disease, social distancing is in the crux of solution to this whole crisis. This has changed the social norms on one hand and the economic rules on the other. Compulsory behavioral change, dictated by this pandemic, have altered our prevailing socio-economic norms, politics and culture. It would have long-lasting impact on our culture, social fabric and economy. We…
The importance of the construction industry in boosting the economy is globally tested and accepted. The increase or decrease in the sales of the cement is typically used as an indicator to judge the economic activity and employment conditions in the country. Even trading of the cement stocks play an important role in determining the Stock Exchange trading trends. Pakistan is presently going through an economic recession caused by various global and local economic factors. In this article, we will discuss the historic trends in the cement industry with forecasts and its potential. We will also briefly discuss how construction…
Plastic packaging is a subject of scrutiny these days and there has been a series of discussions on its viability for the environment and ecosystem stability. Our country Pakistan is not an exception to this problem of plastic shopper bags. We use 55 billion shopper bags annually. These polyethene shopper bags are very light in weight and discarded after one use due to their poor quality. These discarded polyethene shopper bags can’t stand the winds and keep on flying until they reach some water reservoir or face rain and are dumped into the sewerage line choking sewerage system or litter…
Last quarter of any financial year is not less than a budget season. Everyone including government institutes, corporate sector, government employees and even common persons are generally found debating upcoming budge and its impact on their economic lives. This debate becomes more vehement and intense in the times of struggling economy and stagnant economic growth. As such, the current year is not an exception and there are debates how to push start economic growth to put the economy back on track. Government institutions are analyzing the reasons for missing the tax collection targets, low GDP growth, soaring circular debt and…
In the contemporary world, one cannot deny the importance of the strong economy for the wellbeing of the common people. As the modern world has become a global village, no country can afford to have a solitary economic system to succeed in this inclusive economic world. The modern economic system is based on a set of financial activities to drive the national economy. This western economic system is an interest-based economic system where “interest” is the main motivation behind investing money and taking financial risks. On the contrary, our religion Islam is strictly against the financial transactions involving interest or…
“It’s your world”, the motto of the United Nations (UN) embodies the importance of the unity of the nations to advance peace and prosperity. The death and destruction caused by the World Wars led the global community to sit together and deliberate on the ways to ensure global peace. This paved the way for the establishment of the United Nations Organization in 1945. One of the four objectives of the UN is “Fostering cooperation between nations in order to solve economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian international problems”. This shows that solving economic problems of the member countries is also the…
Post World War-II economic conditions led to the growing competition and customer awareness. This era, which is also termed as golden age of capitalism, resulted in global economic expansion. Free market reforms and deregulations resulted in high economic growth and bourgeoning consumer buying power stimulating the demand for goods and the services. This high demand for the goods and the services in turn resulted in more producers and suppliers to meet this emerging demand adding to economic activity and creating competition in the market. With more and more suppliers coming into the market, the customers had the privilege of choosing…
It is a general belief that there are four elements of life i.e. Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Fire, which is synonymous to energy has always been more important and still considered the most significant. Keeping in view the importance of the energy in the everyday life people since ancient times, have always strived to find out the efficient energy resources. In this quest, they have evolved from wood and coal to gas, wind, solar, nuclear energy and the list goes on. In this article, we will discuss the history and importance of natural gas as a source of energy.…
Pakistan came into existence on August 14, 1947 as this was not merely an incident but had its roots in the long and consistent political struggle spread over 100 years. There are various versions, sometimes even conflicting, as to the reasons why Muslims endeavored for a new country. Some analysts attribute this struggle to a separate religious identity others see it in lack of economic opportunities for Muslim minority in the Indian sub-continent while few identify combination of both these aspects leading to the creation of Pakistan. Every school of thought has its own reasons and is quite adamant to its own version…
The role of gender in carving a good leader has always been a matter of great debate between the Human Resource professionals and human right activists. There are two extremes – one advocating women as the supreme and the other associating leadership with masculinity, portraying men to be the natural leaders. Both these schools of thought have their own vices and the reality is lost somewhere in between. Major weakness of both these arguments is that they have overemphasized gender and are not even ready to accept the human nature and competence. Leadership is a trait that is not everybody’s business let alone women.…
The start of this millennium was not good for the cement industry of Pakistan. Market growth was in shackles of uncertain economic conditions leading to lack of construction work on the infrastructure projects. However, subsequent opening of the zero rated exports in 2001 to rebuild Afghanistan was starting point and laid foundation for the survival of the cement industry. Opening of the Afghanistan border provided a new vista of sales improving capacity utilization. All these factors and a steady boost in the local demand led the cement industry to unprecedented local market growth and profits since then, especially the last…
Mostly globalization is equated to increase in the global economic activity through international trade but actually, economy is just one component of it. The urge to see the world, interact with the people and trade their products in the countries around the world has always been an instinct of the people living this world since time immemorial. However, due to lack of communication and transportation resources, this social and economic activity was meager. However, with development of the communication and transportation resources, this social and economic activity has picked up and is growing. This has made the world what we…
The communication resources have improved and flow of information is so instantaneous that almost everybody around the globe has the similar access to the information. The emerging sources of information flow have made it possible for the common person to have access to the information in the real time. Social Media, among other platforms, is the main contributor to this flagrant flow of information exchange. The point to ponder is whether this real time information sharing is utilized and handled responsibly by all the stakeholders or the personal whims have taken over the potential benefits. This ease in the flow…
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor popularly known as CPEC is the talk of the town in Pakistan. Everything happening in the region, especially in Pakistan, is attributed to and seen in the perspective of the CPEC projects. Whereas, political parties and politicians are anxious to reap its fruit for the benefit of their areas and constituencies, common person from every walk of life including even street hawkers and cart pullers are also keen to know about its importance in improving value of their life. The best thing about CPEC is that all parts of the country including Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Punjab,…
We daily come across people making over-generalizations as to various economic factors. You daily encounter people saying that Pakistan’s economy is in doldrums and is about to sink or Pakistan’s economy is blooming like anything. Someone, sometimes, might have considered the actual economic figures before making such comments, while majority views are just to praise or disapprove the government policies based on their political affiliations. Being a citizen of Pakistan, everybody has the right to applause or criticize the government policies including economic policies, nonetheless such analyses should essentially be based on some solid economic indicators/figures and logical analyses of…
Cement industry of Pakistan is experiencing consistent growth since 2011. This growth is attributed mainly to increase in national consumption, thanks to various infrastructure projects including CPEC. National Compound Annual Growth Rate of cement has been 7% in the last 5 years and 10.5% from the year 2014 to the year 2017. This trend of growth in the local consumption is expected to continue with an expected growth rate of 10% during the current year and 3 years CAGR of 8 to 10% up to the year 2021. Exports of cement had a steep decline and touched rock bottom of…