Comment by Riaz Haq on February 20, 2013 at 9:05am

Here's a PakistanToday report on SBP support of small businesses:

The State Bank of Pakistan's (SBP) Credit Guarantee Scheme (CGS) has helped small enterprises and farmers to access Rs 2.83 billion in bank financing over the last 18 months.

The Scheme (CGS) has facilitated financing in 105 districts across the country with 85 percent of loans provided to previously un-served/under-served clients in rural areas, of which 81 percent were subsistence farmers, said a SBP press statement on Wednesday.

Similarly, 91 percent of the loans under the Scheme were provided to small businesses with less than five employees of whom 90 percent were
Sole proprietors the statement added.

Under the CGS, banks also focused on serving the lower end of the commercial banking market through smaller loans, with an average loan size of Rs 390,000 for agriculture and Rs 2.1 million for small enterprises. Specific to the needs of the clients, the durations ranged from less than one year to three years.

The Scheme through its support to previously un catered small rural enterprises is likely to enhance economic opportunities and increase employment in the rural areas of the country.

The Technical Committee of the bank during its annual review of the Scheme observed that despite the extensive geographic spread and a focus on under-banked segments, the participating banks demonstrated prudent lending practices reflected in an infection ratio of only 2.91 percent for agriculture and 1.07 percent for small enterprise loan portfolios, which are much lower than the industry averages.

It shall be noted that the CGS is monitored by the Technical Committee drawing membership from the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), SBP and the Pakistan Banks Association (PBA).

The Scheme is working in tandem with nine banks including big five banks which were selected after due screening by the Committee.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/02/20/news/profit/smes-farmers...

Comment by Riaz Haq on February 25, 2013 at 2:13pm

Here's Financial Times on Pak entrepreneurs flocking to England:

The number of wealthy entrepreneurs entering the UK on the government’s visa programme has doubled in the past year, boosted by people from China and Pakistan setting up businesses in London.

‘Entrepreneur visas’ allow foreign nationals to start a company and earn a fast track to UK citizenship, as long as strict criteria on access to funding, job creation, or business success are fulfilled.

London’s growing importance as a global tech hub, and the increasing difficulty in obtaining the right to work in the UK by other means, has hugely increased the interest in entrepreneur visas over the past year, say experts.

“Entrepreneurs from around the world are attracted to some of the UK’s fastest growing business sectors, such as the rapidly expanding IT start-up sector, which is centred around ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in London,” said Simon Horsfield, partner in the private wealth team of Pinsent Masons, the international law firm.

Take-up of the visas has increased sharply in recent years, jumping to 462 in the 12 months to the end of June 2012, compared with 199 in the same period a year earlier. In 2008 just 11 were issued, according to figures obtained by Pinsent Masons.

American entrepreneurs represented 22 per cent of successful applicants in the year to end of June. Chinese foreign nationals accounted for 11 per cent of the total – rising by 500 per cent to 54 applications last year – while entrepreneurs from Pakistan accounted for 16 per cent.

Mr Horsfield said unlike investor visas which have been criticised for being used as a quick route into the UK for wealthy investors, entrepreneur visas are not about people ‘buying’ a fast track to UK citizenship.

“To satisfy the visa criteria, applicants have to create jobs and prove that they will make a long-term contribution to the UK economy,” he said. “These entrepreneurs can be hugely beneficial to the UK economy. They’ll bring fresh ideas, create new jobs, and provide a boost just when the economy needs it.”

James Badcock, head of the Geneva office at law firm Collyer Bristow, said increasingly tight rules on immigration had boosted the popularity of specialist visas, such as entrepreneur or investor visas.

“Clients considering an entrepreneur visa are often those who are already entrepreneurs in their home country but are concerned about the stability or state of the political regimes where they live,” said Mr Badcock.

He said the visas were increasingly becoming popular among Asians because of the huge influx of Asian investment to London.

If after three years, holders of entrepreneur visas can demonstrate that they have created 10 permanent jobs in the UK or generated income over that period of at least £5m, they will be able to apply for indefinite leave to remain in the UK at that time, with no restriction on their right to work, rather than having to wait for the usual five years.

Successful applicants must start their business within six months of being granted the visa.

www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/553d1c5e-7d0a-11e2-8bd7-00144feabdc0.html

Comment by Riaz Haq on May 9, 2013 at 9:14am

Here's an Aljazeera report titled "Pakistani economy grows in spite of state":

Lahore, Pakistan - Zia Hyder Naqi started his first business when he was eight years old, turning old newspapers into paper bags in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. He didn’t earn much, but the 1.5 Pakistani Rupees ($0.02) he made every day was enough to buy him his lunch, and a sense of satisfaction at having made something.

Today, 40 years later, Naqi is the managing director at a plastics manufacturing firm that employs 430 people, and earned $14.2m in revenue last year.

Synthetic Products and Enterprises Ltd (SPEL) is one of the largest firms of its kind in the country, and makes everything from plastic cups to the inner sides of car doors for firms such as Toyota, Honda and Suzuki, and everything in between.

Business has been good for SPEL, Naqi says, but that's not because the government is providing a conducive climate for economic growth.

"Let's start by saying that we work in spite of the government and not because of the government," Naqi told Al Jazeera. "It really means that we have to struggle. We compete against the best in the world."

Power cuts

Pakistan suffers from a raft of economic problems - spiraling inflation and unemployment, a chronic energy crisis, a lack of implementation of existing policies and an unstable investment environment, owing to the country’s tense security situation.

Primary among those difficulties, Naqi says, is the issue of power cuts - or load-shedding, as it is referred to in Pakistan.

"Our reliability is affected when we have load-shedding, because we don't know when power will arrive and go. So we have to create back-ups, which means that the cost of operations goes up. It affects morale, it affects our work, it affects our delivery, it affects our customers. [It affects] the cost at which we deliver, and how competitive or uncompetitive we become to the customer," he says, estimating that the cost of putting in those back-up system raises the overall cost of his products by as much as 10 percent.

Last year, Naqi’s firm spent an extra $1.2m on putting back-up generators into place, fuelling them and paying for their general upkeep, as opposed to taking electricity off the grid. Moreover, he says, that $1.2m is a sunk cost, as it is not being invested into productive processes. The result: it’s harder for Pakistan’s products to compete in the international market, as the cost of producing electricity pushes firms into a loop of spiraling costs and being unable to further invest in new technologies.

Pakistan’s electricity woes, analysts say, are a result of industrial growth outstripping the pace of growth in generation, and a woefully maintained distribution system that results in line losses of around 20 percent At its peak last summer, the country’s electricity shortfall was a staggering 8,500MW - about 40 percent of the country’s total generation capacity (not counting transmission losses)
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Meanwhile, far from the think tanks and policy committees, the entrepreneurial spirit of the eight-year-old Naqi is still alive and well. Over the last month, dozens of shops have sprung up all over Lahore, selling elections campaign-related merchandise - everything from pins and badges (for about $0.40 each) to gigantic flags ($2.44), from T-shirts ($3.05) to stuffed soft toys in the shape of party election symbols.

"With the amount of money that I’m making right now," says Muhammad Imran, 30, the owner of one such shop, "we could have built a whole bridge!"
....

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/05/20135816311478219...

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 2, 2017 at 4:39pm

Inside #Pakistan’s #sex-toy industry. #dildo #fetish #leather #steel https://www.economist.com/news/asia/21724426-did-i-say-out-loud-i-m... … via @TheEconomist

INSIDE a small, gloomy factory in a provincial city in Pakistan, two young men huddle over a grinding wheel. They believe they are making surgical instruments. But like many of the small, local firms manufacturing steel and leather goods for export, their employer has a new sideline. The nine-inch steel tubes whose tips the men are diligently smoothing are, in fact, dildos. “It’s just another piece of metal for them,” says the firm’s owner, who picks one up to show how his worldlier customers—all of them abroad—can easily grip the gleaming device.

This surreptitious set-up is inevitable. That a country as conservative as Pakistan exports anal beads, gimp masks and padlockable penis cages, among other kinky wares, would shock locals as much as the Westerners whose hands (and other parts) the finished products end up in. Fearing the response of religious hardliners, many of the companies involved do not advertise their wares on their own websites. Instead, they list the saucy stuff through Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant that acts as a middleman for many businesses in the developing world. Some officials demand bribes to allow the exports to flow. Others are simply unaware of the potential for mischief in, for example, a Wartenberg Pinwheel—a spiked disc that can be run across the skin.

The risk has so far proven worthwhile. A local maker of leather goods, one of 64 sex-toy suppliers based in the city that list on Alibaba, says that only a small proportion of its sales comes from fetish gear. But the company can earn as much as 200% profit on a kinky corset or policeman’s uniform, compared with just 25% on mundane jackets and gloves, its original business. To minimise the potential for outrage, production lines are arranged carefully, with only trusted staff putting on the final spikes and studs. To those who complain that the products the firm makes might encourage unmarried or gay people to fornicate—an illegal activity for both groups in Pakistan—the owner’s son has a ready riposte. “What if a gay person wears a [normal] jacket that was also produced by us?” he asks. The company does not know, and has no business knowing, how customers use its products, he says.

Less flexible businessmen may be missing an opportunity. Buoyed by the international success of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, an erotic film that was not released in Pakistan (although locals have posted plenty of spoofs on YouTube), global sales of sex toys have reached about $15bn a year. And recent developments favour Pakistan. Local firms cannot compete in rubber toys, as the latex they would have to import from China is subject to a hefty tariff. But Western customers increasingly opt for alternative materials, including metal, in the wake of reports that many Chinese toys contain a carcinogenic chemical. Back in his office, the owner of the metal-working factory invites your correspondent to feel how smoothly his labourers have polished a dildo. “You can use Pakistani steel for a long time,” he says, approvingly. “It rusts much later than Indian or Chinese.”

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