The federal government has so far released Rs297.278 billion for various ongoing and new social sector uplift projects under its Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) 2019-20, as against the total allocation of Rs701 billion.
As per a data released by Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform, the government has released an amount of Rs134.762 billion for federal ministries, Rs100.56 billion for corporations and Rs21.52 billion for special areas.
Out of these allocations, the government released Rs26.78 billion for security enhancement in the country for which the government had allocated Rs 32.5 billion during the year 2019-20.
An amount of Rs12 billion has also been released for the merged areas of erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) under the government’s 10 years development program.
Similarly for Higher Education Commission, the government released an amount of Rs14.1 billion out of its total allocation of Rs 29 billion while Rs150.73 billion were released for Pakistan Nuclear Energy Authority for which the government had allocated Rs 301.48 billion in the development budget.
For National Highway Authority, the government released Rs93.57 billion against its allocations of Rs154.96 billion.
Under annual development agenda, the government also released Rs 6.4 billion for Railways Division out of total allocation of Rs 16 billion, Rs 4.47 billion for Interior Division, and Rs 5.56 billion for National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination Division.
Revenue Division received Rs 3.2 billion out of total allocation of Rs1.9 billion, whereas the Cabinet Division received Rs 19.3 billion for which an amount of Rs 39.986 billion has been allocated for the year 2019-20.
The government also released Rs 12.75 billion for Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) block and other projects out of its allocations of Rs 27.26 billion and Rs 8.7 billion for Gilgit Baltistan Block and other projects
Korean companies keen to set up JVs
A delegation of Multi Motive Creation People (MMC People) of South Korea led by CEO Yoohee Jong and Kim Advisor Je Jong visited the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry(ICCI).
The delegation said they were working on to bring leading South Korean companies to Pakistan for exploring JVs and investment.
Former Ambassador of Pakistan to South Korea Shaukat Ali Mukadam also accompanied the delegation.
CEO Hoohee Jong said that South Korean companies had vast experience of constructing highrise buildings including hotels and shopping malls.
South Korean company Samsung C&T has built Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai and Petronas Tower in Malaysia.
South Korean companies, he said were interested to invest in Pakistan’s construction sector that offered great potential.
South Korean companies are also interested to explore JVs and investment in electric cars, solar energy, health care, and other sectors.
The delegation held meetings with ICCI leaders to explore business collaborations assuring that they would bring more companies to Pakistan so that they could play effective role in economic development of Pakistan
PARC believes Thar Foundation’s Bio-Saline Agriculture in Thar is a great success
Pakistan’s top agriculture research body, Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) has declared Thar Foundation’s Pilot project of Bio-Saline Agriculture in Thar “a great success”.
Thar Foundation and PARC have also decided to scale up the project to more focus on creating livelihood opportunities for local farmers to make sustainable earnings for the poor households of a natural disaster-hit region of Tharparkar.
Thar Foundation in partnership with PARC had joined hands in 2018 for a pilot project and have successfully tested grafted species of Bairi (Jujube), Lemon and Cheeku (Sapota) over an area of 20 acres with drip irrigation as a mode of irrigation through Biosaline Agriculture.
In order to implement the initiative, Thar Foundation and PARC inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to the collaboration which will focus on the trials of salt-resistant fodder and cash crop species, training of local farmers, information exchange, awareness campaigns, and developing an economic value chain
The multinational Corporations in Pakistan: Qazi Muhammad Salahuddin
It was indeed a time, when multinational companies did very well in the economic prosperity of Pakistan.
But, during last decades the multinational corporation suffered a lot globally due to below reasons.
- A worldwide recession especially in North America and Europe.
- Restructuring of many corporation in the form of mergers and acquisition.
- Market competition especially from the far eastern economies, as most of the corporation are based in either Europe or North America.
- The overall cost of doing business increase globally.
Due to above reasons, the corporation started outsourcing of their business processes to countries where cost of labor is cheaper. As a result of this move below countries got some extra opportunities in their economic activities due to extra toll manufacturing task received: - Indonesia
- Thailand
- Taiwan
- Brazil
- Turkey
- India
Once can easily find that Pakistan did not get any share in this economic shift due to below reason. - Isolated from the global economic platform
- Political and social unrest
- Due to global interest in South Asia, which were different from the benefit of Pakistan interest.
As a result of these factors, Pakistan not only failed to attract new foreign investment rather, its existing foreign economic corporation, started shifting businesses and found to reduce cost, below were the negative effects in Pakistan economy which on can easily found. - Closure of foreign banks operation
- Changes in global regional hubs, and Pakistani based multinational were instructed to report to India.
- Back office support, including procurement, accounting, HR , reporting centers of multinational corporation were shifted from Pakistan to India.
Surprisingly, the GDP growth was at normal levels during last decade in Pakistan due to some positive input from local industry and strong service sector contribution. But as a result of moving back office functions of multinational corporations to India, now the negative effect is very apparent. Below are vital aspects in this context. - A massive increase in unemployment rate in the field of Finance, procurement, engineering and human resources.
- Massive redundancy examples were observed from multinational corporate sector in Pakistan
- People were fired from the jobs and could not be absorbed in the local corporates.
- FBR lost portion of direct taxation from the employees of multinational corporates.
- The cost of doing business of all multinationals was drastically decreased, and the enjoyed huge global profits.
- Created a social unrest and widen the class difference in Pakistan economy and society as a whole. Karachi and Lahore both got a severe hit in all this process, since most of the corporate are based here.
Below are some remedies to stop this mal practices of multinational corporations specially in Pakistan. - The professional bodies in Pakistan, like Engineering Council, ICAP, ICMAP and other should take notice of this economic crises in Pakistan and propose the options which will benefit the local economy accordingly.
- The corporate law and taxation authorities should devise a sort of due diligence process for multinational corporation, to avoid shifting its partial business processes to India.
- Massive corporate taxation should be imposed over such corporations which breach the above said element
- SECP should devise some laws for multinational corporates to outsource their business activities only to locally incorporated Pakistani companies.
- There should be massive incentives for local Pakistani corporates to produce goods and services where multinationals enjoys monopoly.
EDB finalizes Mobile Device Manufacturing Policy
The Engineering Development Board (EDB) has finalized the policy for Mobile Device Manufacturing in Pakistan.
The policy ready as a draft focuses on replacing imported mobile phone sets with locally assembled and manufactured ones.
The board has been directed to take a final decision on the policy by next month.
The policy envisages semi-knocked down (SKD) kits and completely knocked down (CKD) kits in the country.
The companies will opt for SKD, which is the assembly of sets with imported parts and in later stages manufacturing of parts will begin in the country under CKD, EDB officials say.
Also, the board has suggested that duties on the parts be reduced and certain benefits offered for manufacturing of the parts so that the mobile sets assembled through SKD and CKD become cheaper than the mobile sets imported as completely built units (CBU).
At present, out of 26 approvals, 15 mobile phone set assembly units were operating mainly in Karachi and central Punjab, but they are only producing analogue sets and just a limited number of units were assembling Smartphone locally