Fighting Poverty in Pakistan

``Just one Housing Project, i.e. Bahria Town, has signed agreements involving $11 billion with Malaysian companies. Compare this with $2 billion offered to Pakistan for providing facilities to the US for facilitating the Afghan war``


I am a great admirer of entreprenuers; even of the marginally corrupt ones. Having worked with miltiary people, executives, a few beurecrats, academicians etc. I have found entreprenuers to be, by far, the most competent. Pakistan`s problems will be solved, if it can provide a good environment for its entrepreneurs.

Bahria Town is one of largest private housing schemes in Asia (I read somewhere it is largest in South Asia or all of Asia????). Its owner, the entrepreneur Riaz Malik, paid 75 lakhs for a bat signed by Aamir Khan for a cancer hospital. He just launched a private $11 billion dollar extension to his projects in Pakistan!!! That is three times the annual miltiary budget of the whole country..........Following is an interesting speech by him:

``The Housing Industry is the largest industry of Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the 20 countries of the world where Real Estate business is on top of the list. According to unofficial figures, the turnover of just six housing projects in Pakistan is equal to the annual budget of the country. Recently, for example, the CDA sold two big plots in Islamabad for Rs 12.96 billion at Rs 121.8 million per kanal. To judge the depth of this deal one has to look at the second largest bank of Pakistan viz Habib Bank. It has 1,460 branches all over the country and is operating in125 countries of the world. The bank earns Rs 5 billion profit every year. Last year when it was privatized, it sold for Rs 22 billion only. Only two plots sold by the CDA fetched 60 percent of that amount.

In March 2005, our Bahria Town entered into an agreement with two large consortiums of Malaysia viz TAK and MAX Corp for the following projects worth $11 billion: Phase 7 & 8 of Bahria Town, Rawalpindi; Margalla City on 50,000 acres at Margalla Hills; Bahria Golf City on Expressway; 300 flats in Rawalpindi; 38-storeyed Tower for Bahria Town City Centre according to Dubai design; 60-storey building at Clifton, Karachi.

Just one Housing Project, i.e. Bahria Town, has signed agreements involving $11 billion with Malaysian companies. Compare this with $2 billion offered to Pakistan for providing facilities to the US for facilitating the Afghan war. Thus, I claim that in developing just one sector of Islamabad, Pakistan can get rid of all its foreign loans. By developing four sectors we can increase our foreign exchange reserves to match those of India. But consider the plight of the high-potential industry. It is facing the following major problems.........

We initiated Bahria Town in 1996. There have been four governments since then. The Benazir government demanded a huge amount; Nawaz Sharif’s henchman Saifur Rehman initiated an accountability reference against us, and after October 12, 1999 my arrest warrants were issued by the military government. But Almighty Allah proved us innocent in the cases/references filed against us. :``

(www.dailytimes.com.pk)

Re: # 8 romair,

the guy talks sense. our biggest problem is indeed our own society which is run as an inefficient machine. but with current human resources, how can run the machine effciently?

so what`s the core issue now?

Poverty still grinds huge population: WB, IMF

By Imran Ayub

KARACHI: The World Bank and International Monetary Fund have marked Pakistan as among only two Asian countries where poverty has stagnated at around one third of the population for the last decade.

The latest report released jointly by the two institutions said the Asian region has developed enough to reduce poverty rate by each of its country but Pakistan has yet to witness such windfall.

“Since 1990, the region has experienced rapid GDP growth, averaging close to 5.5 percent a year,” said says a report released on April 12 in Washington.

“This has helped to reduce the consumption poverty rate. Two notable exceptions are Pakistan, where poverty has stagnated at around one third of the population, and Afghanistan, which is emerging from decades of conflict.”

The international report came amid claims of the authorities, which said they had taken effective measures in the recent years to reduce rising poverty.

The State Bank of Pakistan in its half yearly report for 2004-05 issued a few weeks back said the economy added 2.9 million new jobs during 2003-2004, which cut the unemployment rate to 7.7 percent from previous 8.8 percent.

But, the WB and IMF both alarmed that bold and urgent action was needed to reduce extreme poverty and improve people’s economic and social prospects in developing countries in keeping with a set of key development targets, called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The international institutions warned Pakistan and Afghanistan to come up with strong measures to fight the poverty, which threatened overall economic growth of the country.

“Against this backdrop, the universal primary education, gender equality, child mortality and major disease MDGs would appear within reach of most of the countries in the region, with only Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the poorer states in India remaining off track unless progress quickens substantially,” it added.

It said among eight Asian states India, the largest country in the region with a population of more than one billion had reduced the poverty rate by 7 to 10 percentage points since 1990. Most other countries in the region registered a similarly significant reduction in poverty over the period.

The report suggested that the eight countries of South Asia were home to nearly 40 percent of the world’s poor living on less than a dollar a day, with income per capita in the order of $460. However, the bank pinpointed three places in the South Asia region, standing out with good MDG indicators of their income levels. “Sri Lanka and the Indian state of Kerala have an established pattern of good performance that reflects the priority successive post-independence governments have given to investments in human development,” said the report.

“Bangladesh’s success has owed much to an effective scaling up of basic services built in large part on a combination of effective partnerships between the public sector and NGOs and the resulting high degree of community involvement, local innovation and experimentation.”

Generally, speaking under this dictator`s regime the inflation rate has shot up to 11% from historical 6.5%, which has been being maintained since Pakistan came into being. Only under the watch of this imported PM, the inflation rate jumped 3 percentage points, that is just with in a year. And then these bay sharam people have guts to talk about growth rates. Could someone please explain to me when growth rate is 6% (GOP propaganda figures; actual rate is close to 2.5%) and the inflation is 11%, how in the world can poverty be eliminated. This is a cruel joke. The tragedy of these lies express themselves in the suicide rate of 1 person every two hours, which this dictator says, has no relationship with rising heart wrenching poverty and joblessness.

It must be extremely hard for those folks who enter public service.Sometimes i wonder if all the power and wealth, we presume they accrue , is really all that or worth it.If a small nation such as pakistan with a population relative to its` size is finding it hard to break even, i wonder how large nations manage their current accounts and balance the books.We must show more patience and give our leaders the benefit of the doubt before disparaging everything they do.However, pakistan , i must say, always has a knack of placing the wrong leader at the wrong time at the wrong place.I don`t know how they do it every time with precision.They get rid of a bear-like creature that can identify with the masses, win over neighbors with his simple unbecoming style, and appoint a hotshot, pompous investment banker who never lived in his country for over 35 years, unfamiliar with the ground realities.This is just my humble observation.And, i share it.

thanks for all the facts and figures...

i wonder if the wizards in the govt will ever learn or make the effort to do soemthing!

Mr Aziz holds the view that a higher growth rate will, in itself, take care of poverty.


He`s right about that...equality only works in the downward direction...you can make people equally poor...can`t make them equally rich...you can, however, provide equality of opportunity.

Commie style propaganda never lifted anyone out of poverty(other than the people spouting the propaganda)...

also, self-delusion doesn`t help....note that this was written by a prescient paki before the KSE was exposed for the joke that it is...self-delusion might work in the paki echo chamber of self-delusion, but the real world is a bit smarter...

The bull, the boom and fears of a bust

The rise of the KSE 100 Index has two aspects to it. First is the manner in which it is composed, and, second is the expectation of how major players in this composition are expected to perform in the future. Scores of related issues will play an important role on how this will unfold, but for the time being suffice it to say that we are stuck on the best-scenario assumption.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz tried his best to calm his audience in a meeting of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Karachi last week by asserting that ``business costs are still low in Pakistan compared to our neighbours``. Amazing, but then he conceded to his `shocked audience` that he did not include India in this comparison. Imagine. So much for honesty!

The composition of the KSE 100 Index is skewed enough to make it jump in hundreds once a major shift in share buying takes place in the top five scripts, they being the ones up for grabs in the privatisation process, which it seems will be finalised before September 2005.

Kamal:

thanks for writing on a very important issue

The government now plans to open 270,000 literacy centers in the country by 2005 to reverse the dubious distinction the country enjoys with regards to its literacy numbers.

can you provide a link?

also, would you happen to know if that is a yearly total? any target numbers for subsequent years?

rgds

t