Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) A delegation from the US Consulate in Karachi, headed by Mr. Rob Silberstein, US Consul General in Karachi visited the Central Depository Company of Pakistan Limited (CDC). Representatives of leading Pakistani corporates and US Businesses in Pakistan attended this event.

Mr. Moin M. Fudda, Chairman CDC Board of Directors, welcomed the delegation and spoke about the long term bilateral relations between US & Pakistan while stressing on the need to foster greater ties on business and trade initiatives. Mr. Badiuddin Akber, CEO-CDC, while giving an overview on the Pakistan Capital Market landscape and CDC’s key role in its development, while highlighting the association between CDC and its counterparts from the US Capital Market.

US Consul General Rob Silberstein lauded CDC on its achievements in transforming the Pakistani Capital Market. He said that “It is vital to take concrete steps to bring our two economies closer together for the benefit of both countries. The fact that so much of Pakistan’s financial sector has been built on the close people-to-people and business- to-business ties between the U.S. and Pakistan is something that needs to be better appreciated. The U.S. and Pakistan can and should bring together expertise and technology for bigger future private sector projects as well as through more effective Public Private Partnerships.”

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) The Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI), organized a session titled ‘Creating a Gender Equal World’ to once again highlight the importance of inclusion of women in all aspects of life, including the Corporate sector for which OICCI is playing a leading role. The session coincided with ongoing celebrations of the ‘International Women’s Day’. On this occasion OICCI President Shazad Dada, sharing his views in the session said “Advancing women’s equality is bound to deliver a high growth dividend for Pakistan. Besides being a social and moral imperative, we need to enable full potential of women for Pakistan’s prosperity”

He said that the International Women’s Day has significant importance for OICCI member companies, who are the leading foreign investors in country, and they are at the forefront in leading initiatives on Women Empowerment and Gender Equality at workplaces.

‘OICCI Women’ is a flagship initiative of the chamber to bring gender equality of international standards in Pakistan’s corporate sector. OICCI has also recommended that the government should set a target of 20% women in management positions by 2022 which should be followed across the board.

Nearly 80% of the OICCI member companies are involved in activities related to women empowerment and creating gender equality which testifies to the significance of women’s role in economy. According to a recent survey done amongst OICCI members, women employees’ form 13% of the total workforce, 12% women are holding top leadership positions, 15% middle level executive positions while 36% junior executive positions are held by women. Some members within OICCI have 30-40%, women in leadership positions, and women from within OICCI member companies have been posted on senior overseas assignment as well. Many OICCI members are role models for championing the cause of gender balance in their respective sectors.

A good number of CEOs and HR practitioners attended the session that aimed to impart knowledge of the best practices and case studies of women empowerment and gender equality that support the idea of “An equal world is an enabled world” as per International Women’s Day theme this year.

Sadia Khan, President/CEO of PICG highlighted the importance of ‘Women on Boards’ in the light of Companies Act 2017, which requires all listed companies to have at least one women in their Board of Directors. Vice President Procter & Gamble, Sami Ahmed, shared his views on ‘Women Empowerment and its role in economic growth’ while CEO Circle Women, Sadaffe Abid, emphasized on ‘Preparing Women Leaders for tomorrow.’

There was also a panel discussion with HR heads of Meezan Bank, K-Electric, Philip Morris Pakistan and Telenor Pakistan to emphasize that ‘Equality is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue.’ Standard Chartered Bank Pakistan and Nestlé Pakistan also shared their best practices for gender equality. The session was moderated by the Executive Director Pharma Bureau, Ayesha Tammy Haq.

The session was highly interactive and based on the extensive interaction among top brass of HR experts, it has been recommended that all private and public sector organizations need to create positive environment for increasing women inclusion in Pakistan’s economy by introducing, among other initiatives, agile working environment, assessing women employees without biases, adopting equal opportunities for growth and development, mentoring women employees and preparing them for future leadership.

The participants found the session highly productive and inspiring and they hoped the culture of equality would prevail at the workplaces in particular and in the country at large.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir): CCI Pakistan, which is part of CCI – a leading bottler within the Coca-Cola System, recently organized a ‘sustainability workshop’ at the Avari Hotel in Lahore.

The purpose of this workshop was to engage stakeholders of CCI Pakistan, including its business partners, policy makers, consultants, NGOs, commercial suppliers and local Government representatives in a strategic dialogue to contribute ideas and suggestions towards shaping CCI’s global sustainability pledge for 2030.

‘Sustainability pledge 2030’ will help CCI to mitigate challenges related to critical areas of concern ranging from creating value for the customers and consumers to protecting the environment and contributing towards community development that it operates in.

While speaking about the workshop, Imran Anjum, Director Public Affairs & Communication at CCI Pakistan said, “The private sector has a moral obligation to play a critical role in averting the imminent challenges facing this world today. Our stakeholder consultation workshops, organized across CCI to shape our 2030 sustainability pledge, is testament of our mutual resolve and determination in helping achieve UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. It is in our greater interest to collaborate and work towards resolving the most critical challenges threatening our people, environment and the future.”

Is Pakistan open to American business? Carnegie Endowment asks Ambassador for Investment, Ali Jehangir Siddiqui

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Washington D.C, United States: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), one of the world’s leading international peace and strategic insight think tanks, invited Ambassador Ali Jehangir Siddiqui to speak on Pakistan’s investment climate and existing Pakistan-U.S. business ties.

In his opening remarks, Ambassador Siddiqui highlighted the Government of Pakistan’s efforts to attract foreign direct investments through incentives, reform, and trade agreements.

“Pakistan has jumped 28 ranks in the latest Ease of Doing Business rankings by the World Bank and given that the report measures comparative performance of countries, Pakistan has made considerable improvement through reform”, the Ambassador stated.

Ambassador Siddiqui went on to narrate success stories of foreign investment in Pakistan including the telecom sector which has foreign ownership and management.He further identified sectors such tourism, agriculture and manufacturing which offer vast potential for successful investment.

Opening remarks were followed by a fireside chat-styled conversation to discuss Pakistan-U.S. business ties, the outlook for improving Pakistan’s anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism (AML-CFT) enforcement, Pakistan’s experience of doing business with China under CPEC, and the role that Pakistani and American businesses and entrepreneurs should play in U.S.- Pakistan relations.

During the discussion, Ambassador Siddiqui underscored the exponential improvement made by the current administration in order to comply with FATF’s requirements. “To date, Pakistan has largely addressed 14 of 27 action items, with varying levels of progress made on the rest of the action plan. However, just one year ago Pakistan had made close to no progress on compliance and even by October 2019 Pakistan had only addressed of 5 of the 27 action items on the FATF action.”

He also emphasized that significant efforts are being made to ensure timely prosecution and adjudication of CFT and money laundering cases which are an important element of the FATF action plan.

On being inquired about the experience of working with Chinese companies under CPEC, Ambassador Siddiqui explained that the experience was largely positive. He stated that the training and technology transfer resulting from CPEC will have positive outcomes for Pakistan over the long run. Ambassador Siddiqui commented further on the openness of CPEC projects for international collaborations, emphasizing on the need for U.S and other international players to proactively search for opportunities to collaborate on CPEC projects.

The event was hosted by James Schwemlein, a nonresident scholar in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Schwemlien is a former U.S. diplomat experienced in South Asia and U.S. foreign economic policy.

The South Asia program of the endowment, hosts policy debates relevant to the security, economic and political developments in the region. The program’s diverse team of experts offer in-depth analysis on South Asia’s most pressing challenges to various stakeholders.

The event was attended by politicians, academics, media, and policy makers.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Easypaisa, the country’s leading payments solution and Seed Out, an innovative crowd funding platform which provides entrepreneurial solutions to the underprivileged , have recently collaborated to digitize the process of payment collection from the latter’s beneficiaries. It is yet another milestone in Easypaisa’s journey of bringing digital financial solutions to its users through partnerships with prominent organizations in the country.

This newly formed partnership will allow beneficiaries of Seed Out to receive and disburse loan payments seamlessly through the EasypaisaApp. The agreement was signed by Khurram Malik, Head of Easypaisa, Telenor Microfinance Bank and Zain Ashraf, Founder & President, Seed Out. Senior executives from both the organizations were also present on the occasion.

Khurram Malik, Head of Easypaisa, TelenorMicrofinance Bank, while expressing his views about the development said: “Easypaisa has been instrumental in providing innovative payment solutions to facilitate our customers and consistently add value to our products and solutions. Our agreement with Seed Out comes in connection with our commitment of digitizing cash payments. We will continue to build such partnerships in order to support convenient and hassle-free payments and enhance financial inclusion in Pakistan”.

Adding his opinion, Founder of Seed Out, Zain Ashraf stated: “Seed Out has always remained true to its vision of integrating technology and development. With this MOU signing with Easypaisa, I’m very pleased as our beneficiaries will be able to easily repay their loan amount from the comfort of their homes. It saves them time and money. Taking small steps to make people’s lives easier makes a big difference”.

Easypaisa is Pakistan’s leading mobile financial services provider serving millions of customers across the country. It is a hallmark for Easypaisa to enable the financially neglected masses in achieving autonomy to grow and become financially inclusive.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir)  U Microfinance Bank Ltd. signed a grant agreement with Karandaaz Pakistan, with funding from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant will help U Bank further its mission of financially including more women. U Bank won the grant through a competitive application process via Karandaaz’s Digital Experiments program.

While uptake for digital financial services (DFS) remains low in Pakistan, the gap is especially wide when it comes to women. Only 7% of women in Pakistan are financially included, compared to 20% of men. Research shows that women are engaged in financial activity informally, especially when it comes to saving. While mobile money is becoming an increasingly popular mode of money storage internationally, in Pakistan adoption of mobile accounts continues to lag behind. Through this grant, U Bank seeks to test out interventions specially designed to encourage more women to become active users of digital accounts. The lessons learned through the experiment will be widely disseminated for the diffusion and uptake of best practices to push the entire ecosystem forward.

“U Bank looks forward to working with Karandaaz Pakistan over the next few months to generate new insights on the interventions that accelerate women’s usage of mobile wallet accounts”, shared Kabeer Naqvi, U Bank’s President, and CEO. “The digital future of the bank is already shaping up with the introduction of internet and mobile banking, deployment of ATMs and a fully digital loan application process. This research will help us further learn the most effective ways to extend our reach and reduce the gender gap within the digital financial services space”.

Ali Sarfraz, CEO Karandaaz Pakistan said, “Karandaaz is delighted to engage in this partnership with U Microfinance Bank Ltd. The focus of this support is to encourage digital financial service providers to use innovative approaches for promotion of inclusivity in general and women’s financial inclusion in particular using A/B testing. We hope that these experiments will help in identifying the drivers that can promote mobile account usage by women who otherwise find it hard to access traditional banking avenues.  The expected outcome is the conversion of in-active users or non-users by trying variations in communication strategy, product features and digital transaction costs.  We are excited about our partnerships with different DFS providers for generating insights about digital account usage and look forward to deepen our engagement with them to support such initiatives.”

Karandaaz is onboarding partners on a rolling basis to conduct digital experiments in partnership with DFS providers to address the barriers related to uptake and active usage of digital accounts. Interested parties can apply to Karandaaz for support to conduct experiments for testing ideas, products, services, and incentive structures that can potentially accelerate the uptake of DFS by excluded and underserved segments, especially rural women. AB testing will be conducted through these experiments to extract results. The lessons learned through these experiments will be widely disseminated for the diffusion and uptake of best practices by the DFS practitioners.