February 6, 2006	Monday	Muharram 7, 1427

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Challenges for the new KSE chief ONE month into his new job as the fourth managing director of the Karachi Stock Exchange, M.A. Lodhi is yet to be broken in. Employees are still wary, unsure what to make of him....		Smugness about the economy Pakistan’s rising economic growth rate since 2002-03 in general and its peak at 8.4 per cent in 2004-05 in particular has made the country’s top brass so sanguine about the economy...
Agriculture strategies Agriculture has commanded great priority at the rhetorical level but in actual practice, particularly at the time of resource allocation (four per cent of the total financial investment); it is discriminated against and under estimated....		Efficient usage of bio-fertilizers IT is estimated that one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition. That’s roughly 100 times as many as those who actually die from these causes each year....
Coping with loss of livestock Globally, livestock production accounts for 40 per cent of the gross value of agricultural production. In Pakistan about 30 to 35 million people are engaged in livestock raising with a holding...		Essential oil extraction from roses IN the recent years, failure in marketing of major agriculture products such as wheat, cotton, rice, and sugarcane, has created a social crust and financial problems for poor farmers....
Higher poverty in Balochistan Conflict in Balochistan among other reasons also highlights its ‘poverty’. The ongoing military operation is pushing more and more people towards below-poverty line, says a report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)....		Prospects and problems of IT industry Despite being a young but emerging sphere of economic development, Information Technology (IT) has revolutionized numerous developing economies across the globe, having gained the status of a flagship industry in most cases....
High employee turnover Today, one of the two fast growing sectors is banking (the other is telecom). Various variables in banking especially consumer banking are affecting it in a complex yet dynamic manner, which...		Civil aviation reform begins: Mumbai letter INDIA’S most ambitious civil aviation reforms initiative unveiled last week – the privatization and modernization of the nation’s two busiest airports, Mumbai and Delhi – hit an air pocket even before it could take-off....
Export financing through open account Exporters as well as regulators of foreign exchange will have to work hard to gradually adopt the proposed market based mode of payment, i.e., the ‘open account’....		Lessons from abroad THE last few decades witnessed a dramatic divergence in development of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and East Asia (EA). Reasons for the dismal economic progress in SSA and robust development of EA...
Monetary policy: filling the gaps SBP’s latest monetary policy statement gave rise to controversies, not all of them fairly warranted, though this reaction was wasn’t wholly unexpected; earlier comments from the new governor of the SBP...		Domestic trade to be restructured THE long-standing calls for radical changes in the structure and the anatomy of the Export Promotion Bureau have at last been heeded and it has been re-christened as the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan....
Davos trade talks hold promise AN informal mini-ministerial conference of trade ministers of key WTO members held last week at Davos on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum — the first such discourse after the...		World economies Despite political uncertainty and rising oil prices, inflation in Latin America is expected to post an average rate of 5.4 per cent this year, the lowest in more than 25 years. The region’s economies are expected...
Share trade boosted on positive sentiment Strong weekend rally boosted by higher interim dividend by some leading oil shares, notably the Pakistan Oilfields and the Attock Petroleum, pulled the market out from an initial sluggishness as investors continued to build up long positions despite fresh price flare-up....		Rupee falls against euro RANGE-bound trading was witnessed in the inter-bank market on the first day of the week. There was sufficient dollar supply to cover the demand. The rupee traded at Rs59.85...
Central bank mops up excess liquidity through OMOs ON January 31, the State Bank of Pakistan picked up Rs16 billion, through the OMO, while the market was in excess of about Rs8 billion. This raised overnight rates to 8.9...		Supply and demand remain steady THE Karachi wholesale commodity markets last week showed normal trading conditions as supplies matched the local demand owing to steady arrival from the upcountry markets, notably from Sindh....