Two thirds of Pakistan’s population live in rural areas, rural poverty is a major destabilizing factor. Authoritative studies have documented rising poverty levels with a decreased capacity of acquire and hold land which is the main source of subsistence in the agricultural areas. Pakistan’s economy has also been growing slowly over the past two decades. The annual…
Family firms are the most typical business organizational form, in most Asian countries (excluding modern China) they are often the oldest as well. Representing more than 80% of all (private and public) corporations across a vast swath of industries they are a third of the value of listed firms. Private ownership in China has only…
According to CGAP, it is estimated that around 1.2 billion adults worldwide were able to gain access to formal financial accounts for the first time between 2011 and 2017, which represents a 35% growth over a six-year period. This tremendous feat was achieved due to the efforts of players other than banks such as mobile…
Introduction Without addressing “financial inclusion” on a war footing it will be impossible to close the gap between the haves and have-nots with respect to benefitting from the banking system. Their lives must be brought into the financial comfort zone by access to services, products and commodities presently available only to limited number of citizens…
Despite entering the era of digital age the approach of our government institutions, with control of our resources in the hands of the few, is to act in accordance with their normal modus operandi and delay the process. This is done to the detriment of the masses and is a true reflection of the colonial era…
In its broadest definition “Culture” is “the way we do things”, corporate culture is the way an organization is organized. Defined by the people who manage and work in the organization it partly comes about naturally. On the other hand, Corporate identity is a western term to describe ways for making a company distinctive and…
Put simply, financial inclusion is access to formal financial services by individuals and firms to use a range of quality payments, savings, credit and insurance services which meet their needs with dignity and fairness. These services include credit, savings, deposits, payments, transfers and insurance etc. In recent years an important driver towards financial inclusion has…
While Pakistan desperately needs to progress, religious and ethnic nationalism divides the country and hampers development. The country broke up in 1971 because of ill-conceived nationalism where ethnicity-related prejudices pitched both parts of the country against each other and broke up the unity of Pakistan in the end. One needs to reflect more on the…
Afghanistan’s all-powerful Defence Minister Mullah Yaqub, son of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, recently expressed the Taliban’s willingness to send Afghan army personnel to India for military training, saying they “don’t have any issue with it”. As reported by the Express Tribune, Mullah Yaqub said, “We want good and cordial relations with India and we hope…
The spread of disinformation over the Internet and social media is a major international challenge that affects us all. Intentionally and verifiably false “fake news”, in other words “outright lies”, is designed to manipulate people’s perceptions of reality. Hiding the real events or causes of those events, the purpose is to hide culpability of the…
