Pakistan in 2016: Economy, Security & Relations With India, US

How was the year 2016 for Pakistan? What can Pakistan expect in 2017?

Did Pakistan’s internal security improve in 2016? If do, how? And by how much? How was it done? By Zarb e Azb military operation? Did Pakistan implement the National Action Plan to address extremism and radicalization in society?

Source: South Asia Terrorism Portal

How did Pakistan’s economy do? And how did the stock market do? Did improved security help? Did China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) investments help boost investor confidence in the country?

Source: Bloomberg



What caused deterioration in India-Pakistan ties? Was it the murder of Burhan Wani and India’s attempt to blame it on “cross-border terrorism” from Pakistan? Did Indian PM Modi succeed in isolating Pakistan?

How will Obama’s exit and Trump’s presidency affect US-Pakistan relations? Will these be as bad as under Obama? Or better? Or worse under Trump? How will Pakistan’s close ties with China and warming relations with Russia play into this?

Did the Obama administration initially condoned the rise of ISIS  in Syria as claimed by President-elect Donal Trump's national security advisor General Michael Flynn in an interview with Mehdi Hasan of Aljazeera? Will Russia-Turkey-Iran succeed in bringing peace to Syria?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with panelists Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

https://youtu.be/87m_t7D8ftY





https://vimeo.com/197727259





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Views: 549

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2017 at 8:03am

With 14% CAGR, #Pakistan #MSCI index beats #India's 8.39% CAGR in stock returns since Year 2000 http://ecoti.in/IfRrHb via @economictimes
Pakistan's stock market has outperformed the Indian equity market with a huge gap since the beginning of the new century. 

Over the past 16 years, the MSCI Pakistan index climbed over 14 per cent in dollar terms on a compounded annual growth (CAGR) basis, while the MSCI India index has advanced 8.39 per cent annually during the same period, data available with Bloomberg showed 

The KSE100 index of the Karachi Stock Exchange rallied 2,625 per cent from 1,772 in January 2000 to around 48,300 in December 2016, while the Sensex of the BSE advanced 431 per cent in this period. 

KSE100 tracks the performance of biggest companies by market capitalisation from each sector of the Pakistani economy listed on bourses. 

On the hand, the 30-share Sensex jumped from 5,005 in December 1999 to 26,626 on December 30, 2016. 

The macroeconomic conditions of India look strong in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). According to an earlier Economic Times report quoting the Central Intelligence Agency, India's real GDP growth rate was at 7.3 per cent in 2015, ranked 12th globally, compared with Pakistan's 4.2 per cent, ranked 60th.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2017 at 8:30am


Both SATP & Numbeo show dramatic decline in terror and crime in Karachi over the last 3 years. 

Karachi now ranks 31st among world's most dangerous cities, down from 11 in 2013. 

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp

South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) data on terrorism in Sindh:

Total Terror Deaths in Sindh:

254 in 2016, down from 607 in 2015, 1141 in 2014, 1625 in 2013


Bomb Blasts in Sindh:


12 in 2016, down from 19 in 2015, 62 in 2014, 97 in 2013

Suicide Bombings:

zero in 2016 down from 26 in 2015, 28 in 2014 and 16 in 2013


Sectarian Deaths in Sindh:

25 in 2016, down from 164 in 2015, 86 in 2014 and 122 in 2013. 


http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/pakistan/sindh/datasheet/da... 

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2017 at 8:56am


#Pakistan #inflation eases to 3.70% in December 2016 with steep drop in prices of #chicken, #onions & #tomatoes.

http://timesofoman.com/article/99696/World/Pakistan/Pakistan-inflat...

Pakistan's annual inflation rate eased to 3.70 per cent in December from 3.81 per cent in November, the Bureau of Statistics said on Monday.

On a month-on-month basis, prices decreased by 0.68 per cent in December compared with November, the bureau said. 

Average inflation for the July-December period stood at 3.88 per cent, compared with the same period last year.

The steepest rise in year-on-year prices was seen in the prices of gram flour and pulse gram. The steepest drop in year-on-year prices was in the price of onions, tomatoes and chicken.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2017 at 11:25am

For instance, auto sales in fiscal year 2016 have touched 217,679 units, an all-time high figure compared with previous best figures of 204,212 units in 2006-07 due to robust GDP growth rate and unprecedented auto financing from banks in Musharraf’s era.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/1280670/year-new-cars-got-back-game/

The cement industry has gone in for capacity expansion from 44 million tons to 60 million tons within a couple of years to meet the massive rise in domestic demand due to China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and other public sector projects, said Chairman All Pakistan Cement Manufacturers Association (APCMA), Sayeed Tariq Saigol, here on Wednesday.

The APCMA Chairman said the rise in domestic demand has improved cement industry's capacity utilisation. However, he said suggestion by some quarters for the removal of import duty based on current trend would not be a wise decision.

http://www.brecorder.com/pakistan/industries-a-sectors/332712-cpec-...


Pakistan energy consumption rose 10.5% (India's 8.1%) in 2015


https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-...

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2017 at 9:34pm

From UK's Spectator: 

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/12/pakistan-is-winning-its-war-on-t...

Five years ago we walked around gangster-infested Liyari town in Karachi’s port area with the local mafia don, Uzair Baloch. Baloch (now in jail) told us he could speak to Zardari whenever he wanted. The violence just rose and rose, until Zardari’s replacement Nawaz Sharif ordered his cabinet to Karachi and gave the state’s paramilitary arm, the Rangers, unlimited powers. This was the moment when political tolerance of violence ended.

We interviewed Major-General Bilal Akbar, director-general of Sindh Rangers for the past two-and-a-half years, at his HQ in the south of the city; he has since transferred to be the Pakistani army’s chief of general staff. After asking us to pass on his regards to Nick Carter, head of the British army (with whom he used to play bridge every Friday night when they were both stationed in Kabul), he explained the security situation.

In 2013 there were 2,789 killings in Karachi. In the first 11 months of 2016 there were 592. In 2013 there were 51 terrorist bomb blasts. Up to late November this year, there were two.

Three years ago, Karachi suffered from an orgy of kidnapping for ransom. There were 78 cases in 2013, rising to 110 the following year. This year, there have been 19.

Some 533 extortion cases were reported in 2013; in 2016, only 133. Sectarian killing is sharply down: while 38 members of the Shia minority (who are brutally targeted in Pakistan) were killed in 2013, that figure was down by two thirds in 2016.

Major-General Bilal told us: ‘We have apprehended 919 target killers from the militant wings of political parties since September 2013. They confessed to over 7,300 killings. The daily homicide rate in the city is less than two now. It used to be ten or 15, and during ethnic clashes we could lose 100 lives a day.’

Just three years ago, according to the Numbeo international crime index, Karachi was the sixth most dangerous city in the world. Today it stands at number 31 — and falling.

Six months after he ordered the Rangers into Karachi, Nawaz Sharif took an even more momentous decision. The prime minister, whose initial instinct had been to negotiate with the Taleban and oppose the use of force, yielded to advice from his generals. He sent the army into North Waziristan, the Taleban stronghold on the Afghan border.

North Waziristan had not just provided a base for the Taleban leadership. It was a centre for the manufacture of explosives, suicide vests and military equipment, and for training camps, as well as drawing in foreign fighters from al-Qaeda. It was the epicentre of terrorism in Pakistan, which is why this intractable and remote area had been left alone by the army for so long.

In June 2014, General Raheel Sharif (now a national hero, and no relation of prime minister Sharif) took charge of a massive military offensive, Zarb-e-Azb. Taleban groups responded with a series of atrocities of which the most grotesque was the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, in which a reported 140 children were killed.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 2, 2017 at 9:52pm

#India in 2017: A graveyard of jobs? #Modi #AchchheDin #BJP http://dnai.in/dJi4 via @dna @AntoJoseph

I belong to the pre-liberalisation kind whose middle-class dreams were woven around a five-digit monthly salary. By the time we managed to reach that ‘big-fat’ salary, probably a decade later - in early 2000’s, it had lost the glamour quotient. Dreams grew bigger to six digits, and then, seven digits. Many chased dollars and dinars in multi-national companies only to attain the seven-digit nirvana. A few nerds from India’s premier institutes marched their way to Google, Microsoft and the like, with seven-digit joining salaries, making several Indian CXOs salivate.

That is the story so far. The year 2017 but promises to deflate all those puffed dreams.

The IT sector, savior of Indian youth for two decades, is fast turning a graveyard of employment. Software engineers are as redundant as electricians and plumbers. There is a late realisation that India can’t blindly emulate the Chinese model of export-led growth on massive infrastructure and investments, amid the continuing global slowdown. Decelerating domestic demand has hit capacity utilization across several sectors in the country and inevitably, job creation. As per the government records, 1.35 lakh jobs created in India in 2015 was the lowest in seven years, much lower than 4.19 lakh in 2013 and 9 lakh in 2011. The slow rate at which India’s job market grows looks pretty scary, at a time when an increasing number of youngsters come out of professional colleges and scout for jobs.

India may soon lose its lure as a leading global market as unemployment spreads.

Since Narendra Modi-led government took charge in May 2014, job creation has been its top priority. Campaigns such as Make-in-India and Start-up India were meant to enhance the employment potential. But two years later, in June 2016, Modi was candid: “The middle class has its aspirations. We have to create jobs. How will job creation happen? Till I invest in the development of infrastructure, there will be no job creation.”

The media industry, which weathered even the global economic recession in 2008-09, is facing its toughest challenge in 2017. Everyone is a broadcaster on social media today, while reading as a habit is on a steady decline. TV journalism, fast replacing the reckless social media, has lost its narrative completely in the political cacophony. On the flip side, readers of newspapers are paying a heavy price as they refuse to pay for quality news, forcing newspapers to depend on advertising revenue for daily sustenance. As the economy takes a plunge, the fourth pillar of democracy, propped up by the generous India Inc, goes down on its knees. The printed word then merrily drowns in the political and corporate etiquettes.

Stock markets have ended 2016 in a smothered whimper. Leading stock brokerages, which predicted a huge jump at the start of 2016, are now hiding behind a `double whammy’: the interest rate hike in the US that left emerging markets reel in fund outflow, and the likely short-term economic slowdown in the wake of demonetization. The BSE Sensex, which gained as much as 30% in 2014 to close at 27499 on the Modi wave, has subsequently seen two dismal years. It ended at 26626 on December 30, much below the 2014-end level.

2017 offers too little options for the government. India’s huge workforce can’t be a force without work.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 3, 2017 at 8:51am

#India may matter less in the world during #Trump presidency. #Pakistan, #China #Russia #Asia

http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-india-may-matter-less-in...


The diplomatic cover afforded by the Obama administration allowed the Modi government to focus its energies on isolating Pakistan internationally and get away with a heavy-handed policy in Kashmir – both policies that served to bolster the BJP domestically. Russia and China were relatively marginal to India’s diplomatic considerations, even though Delhi valued Moscow as a source of weapons and energy while the enhanced trade with China created a measure of interdependence that managed tensions. Delhi could choose not to participate in China’s ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) infrastructural initiative because the US, Western powers and Japan were envisaged as the primary sources of security, legitimacy and resources for India.


This entire calculus now stands upended. Trump is keen on dismantling the pillars of US foreign policy in a manner that makes the US’ political and bureaucratic machinery deeply uncomfortable. He wants to scale back American commitments abroad, he’d like to focus on an ‘America first’ policy and is expected to be explicitly transactional in his dealings with other countries. He has chosen a pro-Russian figure in Rex Tillerson as his Secretary of State and picked China hawk Peter Navarro to head the National Trade Council, leading many to anticipate serious tensions with China on trade issues.

Some in Delhi may believe that an aggressive US that counters an assertive China works for India. But policymakers will know that it is one thing to play geopolitical chess in peace time, i.e. strengthen regional partnerships to counter a rising power, and quite another being on the cusp of a US-China conflict in Asia and having to choose sides. It’s not clear if such developments will materialise soon, but the scene of global politics will move to great power dynamics between US, Russia and China. India will be peripheral to the concerns of all three for different reasons.

As far as the US is concerned, it is not clear how much attention Trump will devote to India while he is preoccupied with the inevitable domestic turbulence his presidency will generate and the resetting of ties with Russia and China. India’s leverage abroad now appears to depend on the Washington security establishment’s ability to normalise Trump and make him aware of Delhi’s utility to American strategy in Asia. But that establishment itself will take time recovering and coping with the changes he wants and India as a priority could slip in the process. Trump did not mention India in his foreign policy speech on April 27, 2016 and it is not clear if he has any definite ideas as to what to do with the relationship.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 3, 2017 at 9:03am

#Pakistan violence drops significantly in 2016: Report

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/pakistan-violence-d...

Deaths linked to violence in Pakistan decreased significantly in 2016, dropping 45 per cent compared with the previous year, a report released Tuesday said.

About 2,610 people lost their lives due to violence during the period compared with 4,647 in 2015, according to research by the Islamabad-based think tank, the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS).

"There was nearly a 45 per cent reduction in the number of violence-related fatalities in 2016, which continued the trend of reduction from 2014," the report said. "In fact, since 2014, there has been an overall reduction of nearly 66 per cent."

It added that December was the least violent month for the country during the year.

Pakistan's army launched an operation in June 2014 to wipe out militant bases in northwestern tribal areas and bring an end to a bloody insurgency that has cost thousands of civilian lives since 2004. It has involved a series of military offensives as well as concerted efforts to block the militants' sources of funding.

Last year, the country recorded its lowest number of killings since 2007 when the Pakistani Taliban was formed. But the remnants of militant groups are still able to carry out periodic bloody attacks.

According to the CRSS report, the two provinces of central Punjab and southwestern Baluchistan had a marginal increase in violence during 2016.

Baluchistan suffered the most fatalities as violence-related deaths rose from 719 in 2015 to 798 last year, an upsurge of nearly 10 percent, followed by central Punjab which lost 424 people during 2016 - the highest number of fatalities in the province during the last four years.

Both provinces were the targets of suicide attacks that increased the casualty count. Baluchistan had three suicide attacks, leaving 186 dead, while Punjab had one suicide attack at a park crowded with families on Easter Sunday, killing 75 including many children.

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 3, 2017 at 11:53am

The “Crises of Room”—Robert Kaplan
January 2, 2017 | Filed under: Security and tagged with: Afghanistan, bombs falling on Gaza, Indian Ocean, social media, West Bank

While the Americans and Europeans focus on globalization, the appeal of nationalism and military power is growing in Eurasia. Missile and bomb tests, biological warfare programs, and the development of chemical weapons are “the products of a prosperous, liberalizing Asia,” Bracken notes. What the West has “failed to recognize” is that the technologies of war and wealth creation have always been closely connected: from Asia’s economic rise has come its military rise. In the early Cold War years, Asian military forces were primarily lumbering, World War II–type armies whose primary purpose, though never stated, was national consolidation.........


But as national wealth accumulated and the computer revolution took hold, Asian militaries from the oil-rich Middle East to the tiger economies of the Pacific developed full-fledged, military-civilian post-industrial complexes, with missiles and fiber optics and cellular phones. ..........

An unbroken belt of countries from Israel to North Korea (including Syria, Iran, Pakistan, India, and China) has assembled either nuclear or chemical arsenals and is developing ballistic missiles. A multipolar balance of terror stretches over a 6,000-mile arc, cutting across military and political theaters and regional studies departments into which the West divides up Asia. The “death of distance” is upon us, Bracken warns. Take Japan, which ever since North Korea in 1998 fired a missile across it, landing in the Pacific Ocean, is no longer a zone of sanctuary, but an integral part of mainland Asia military space, despite its archipelagic geography.....

China, North Korea, India, Pakistan, and other countries are developing disruptive technologies. In an age of former Third World countries acquiring tactical nuclear weapons, large forward bases like the kind the U.S. military maintained in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait prior to the two Gulf wars may henceforth be vulnerable to enemy attack. Such a development promises to hinder America’s projection of power around the Eurasian rimland, and thus pave the way toward a more unstable, multipolar power arrangement......

Bracken warns that nationalism is “dangerously underrated” by Western observers, who see it as part of a retrograde past that economic and social progress moves us beyond. “The most important issue of the twenty-first century is understanding how nationalism combines with the newly destructive technologies appearing in Asia.” As I’ve said, the new nuclear powers, like Pakistan, India, and China, will have poor and lower-middle-class populations, and this will abet a resentful, hot-blooded nationalism in an age when the new military symbols are not armies but missiles and nuclear weapons—the latest totemic objects of the crowd....


Understanding the map of the twenty-first century means accepting grave contradictions. For while some states become militarily stronger, armed with weapons of mass destruction, others, especially in the Greater Middle East, weaken: they spawn substate armies, tied to specific geographies with all of the cultural and religious tradition which that entails, thus they fight better than state armies on the same territory ever could. Southern Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the former Tamil Tigers of northern Sri Lanka, the Maoist Naxalites in eastern and central India, the various pro-Taliban and other Pushtun tribal groupings in northwestern Pakistan, the Taliban itself in Afghanistan, and the plethora of militias in Iraq, especially during the civil war of 2006–2007, are examples of this trend of terrain-specific substate land forces. 

Comment by Riaz Haq on January 3, 2017 at 4:29pm

Missile development, CPEC security termed major successes

http://www.dawn.com/news/1305699/missile-development-cpec-security-...

The military has enumerated successful tests of various missiles by the army and navy, arrangements for the security of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and targeted strikes by the air force on militant hideouts in support of operation Zarb-i-Azb among its accomplishments during 2016.

According to a message released on social media by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director general on New Year’s Eve on Saturday, an enhanced version of the Babur cruise missile and the indigenously produced air-launched Ra’ad missile were successfully tested during the year.

The navy test-launched the shore-based anti-ship missile Zarb and fired a surface-to-surface anti-ship missile in the North Arabian Sea from the Sword Class Frigate PNS Aslat.

Arrangements for the actualisation and security of the CPEC, consisting of an 870km road network and raising of a Special Security Division and Task Force 88 for its maritime security were carried out.

According to the ISPR, the navy proved its vigilance and operational preparedness by detecting and blocking an Indian submarine from entering Pakistani waters south of the country’s coast.

Also during the year, the groundbreaking of an air power centre of excellence was carried out to enhance PAF’s capacity to meet future challenges and undertake counterterrorism operations.

The Pakistan Air Force’s C-130 won the best aircraft trophy at the Royal International Tattoo Show in the United Kingdom.

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