December 27, 2005	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 24, 1426

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Making KESC customer-centric DURING the past century, organizations traversed considerable distance from being product-centric to competition-centric to customer-centric. It is, therefore, little wonder that KESC’s new top management is trying to instil confidence in...		KSE chairman — what’s all the fuss about? A DIRECTIVE issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) on November 29 requiring the stock exchanges to elect a non-broker director as chairman was received with the expected response from the various stakeholders....
Floating bank customers A BRITISH software development company’s officials believe that the Pakistani banks stand a ‘big chance’ of reaping huge profits should they decide to venture in the UK market and tap a...		Taunsa Barrage model for water sharing THE federal government could not have asked for more opportune and supportive circumstances for its plans to build water reservoirs than the start of rehabilitation and remodelling of Taunsa Barrage....
Sprinkler irrigation MANY scientific methods are designed, planned, developed and applied successfully for a suitable irrigation system to grow vegetables and other crops, one among which is the sprinkler irrigation system....		Contamination-free cotton and farmers’ response COTTON is an important non-food cash crop and a significant source of foreign exchange earning. It accounts for 10.5 percent of the value added in agriculture and about 2.4...
Bio-saline agriculture for poverty alleviation ABOUT 40 per cent of the cultivated area of Pakistan is salt-affected. Salinity problem is severe in arid to semi-arid regions where water is a scarce commodity, rainfall erratic, and groundwater saline....		Distortions in wheat marketing IN AN article, “Flawed wheat policy,” recently published by EBR Weekly, the writer has raised some interesting points, which one would do well to paraphrase, before commenting on them....
Local finance and the NFC THE Sixth National Finance Commission completed its five-year term on July 21 last without giving any award for sharing the federal income among provinces. Earlier, the chief ministers had agreed to...		World economies According to the ADB latest economic update for 2005, the economies of East Asia are projected to grow in aggregate by 6.9 per cent in 2005, in line with their strong average expansion rate of the past five years....
Indian firms eying ‘off-patent drugs’ business: Mumbai Letter THE gold trade in Mumbai, India’s financial and commercial capital, is still reeling from the wild fluctuations witnessed over the past few weeks in the price of the yellow metal....		Wages below subsistence level IN economics land, labour, capital and organization are the factors of production. Correspondingly, national income is divided among rent, wages, interest and profits. There are different theories for determining the level of remunerations to these factors of production....
The strains of rapid expansion BANKS everywhere are engaged in re-shaping themselves for what they perceive to be the unfolding challenges of the time, the biggest of which is expanding their operations without “collapse” under the strains that this effort involves....		Opposition’s co-operation in reconstruction THE government’s efforts to enlist the co-operation of the opposition in its reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts following the October 8 earthquake have failed....
Negotiations limping forward AFTER a hectic and energy draining week, the Hong Kong phase of the Doha Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTNs) limped forward as 149 trading nations of the world signed a...		Debt overhang continues THE total outstanding domestic debt at 47.4 per cent of GDP at the end of FY99 declined to 32.5 per cent at the end of FY05, says the latest SBP annual report....
Wake-up call for skill development Economists, technocrats, policymakers and businessmen are now giving a wake-up call to develop fast the sorely needed skills that have left Pakistan way behind other Asian countries....		Year-end stock buying subdued on tensions over Kalabagh Dam STOCKS showed either-way movements during the last week amid some external negative and positive under currents but larger decline was averted, thanks to the presence of support at the dips, notably on the selected counters....
Forex balances held outside Pakistan on the increase ON December 21, the State Bank of Pakistan siphoned off Rs68.479 billion through the auction of treasury bills against the target of Rs45 billion. The SBP raised Rs64.016...		Increased dollar supply eases buying pressures Increased dollar supply together with low dollar demand from the corporate sectors towards year-end has eased the buying pressure over the US currency in the local currency market, which wore a dull look this week....
Growers’ demand pushes up sugar prices THE wholesale Karachi commodity markets passed through an active trading week last week as commercial houses and brokers resumed their covering operations before the year is out...