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Saturday, February 04, 2023

Pakistan fastest growing apps market worldwide in 2022: report

The number of apps downloaded by Pakistanis in 2022 rose by 35.4 per cent compared to the preceding year, making the country the fastest-growing apps market in the world, according to a report by Data Darbar, a private markets intelligence platform.

The growth rate, which had been 26.8pc in 2021 and jumped to 35.4pc last year, was almost three times that of the next country on the list — China. The growth rates of the next three countries — India, Mexico and Indonesia — were below 10pc.

However, in absolute terms, Pakistan was ranked ninth, up three spots from the preceding year.

“With 3.5 billion downloads, Pakistan was ahead of all comparable markets except for Indonesia. That trend replicated on other metrics: the Southeast Asian nation had both the highest number of publishers and locally made apps,” the report added.

Pakistanis used mobile apps for 161bn hours in 2022, according to the report, placing the country sixth worldwide.

“Pakistan was only second to Indonesia in terms of the number of outstanding active apps by local publishers. However, in terms of traction and usage, very few of the locally developed apps make it to the top charts in Pakistani.”

WhatsApp Business was the most downloaded app according to the report, followed by Snapchat, WhatsApp Messenger, Capcut and TikTok. Among locally developed apps, Easypaisa was the most downloaded, followed by Jazz, Jazz Cash, Zong and Universal Remote TV.

Most downloaded apps by category

Shopping

Alibaba
Daraz
OLX
Savyour
Ali Express

Short-videos (excluding TikTok)

SnackVideo
Bigo Live
Likee
FunXD
Chamet

Audio streaming

Spotify
Starmaker
Bajao
Soundcloud
YouTube Music

Finance

Easypaisa
JazzCash
Barwaqt
Zindigi
PK Loan

Video streaming

Tamasha
Netflix
ARY Zap
Tapmad

Now you can follow Dawn Business on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook for insights on business, finance and tech from Pakistan and across the world.

Taliban detain educator who assailed girls varsity ban

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KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have “beaten and detained” an academic who voiced outrage on live television against their ban on women’s university education, his aide said on Friday.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights called on Taliban administration to release the university lecturer and education activist. “(I am) concerned about yesterday’s arrest of peaceful education activist and university lecturer Ismael Mashal by the Taliban,” UN rights rapporteur Richard Bennett said on Twitter, calling for his immediate and unconditional release.

Veteran journalism lecturer Ismail Mashal caused a storm by tearing his degree certificates to shreds on TV in December, protesting the edict ending women’s higher education.

In recent days, domestic channels showed Mashal carting books around Kabul and offering them to passers-by.

“Mashal was mercilessly beaten and taken away in a very disrespectful manner by members of the Islamic Emirate,” Mashal’s aide Farid Ahmad Fazli said, referring to the Taliban government.

A Taliban official confirmed the detention.

“Teacher Mashal had indulged in provocative actions against the system for some time,” tweeted Abdul Haq Hammad, director at the Ministry of Information and Culture. “The security agencies took him for investigation.”

Mashal — a lecturer for more than a decade at three Kabul universities — was detained on Thursday despite having “committed no crime”, Fazli said.

“He was giving free books to sisters (women) and men,” he added. “He is still in detention and we don’t know where he is being held.”

Footage of Mashal destroying his certificates on private channel TOLOnews went viral on social media.

In deeply conservative and patriarchal Afghanistan it is rare to see a man protest in support of women but Mashal, who ran a co-educational institute, said he would stand up for women’s rights.

“As a man and as a teacher, I was unable to do anything else for them, and I felt that my certificates had become useless. So, I tore them,” he said at the time. “I’m raising my voice. I’m standing with my sisters… My protest will continue even if it costs my life.”

A small group of male students also held a brief walkout protesting the ban.

The Taliban promised a softer regime when they returned to power in August 2021, but they have instead imposed harsh restrictions on women — effectively squeezing them out of public life.

In December, the authorities ordered all aid groups to stop their women employees coming to work. They have since granted an exemption to the health sector, allowing females to return to employment there.

Secondary schools for girls have also been closed for over a year, while many women have lost jobs in government sectors.

They have also been barred from going to parks, gyms and public baths.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2023

The Wandering Earth 2: Global vision and Chinese wisdom

By Wu Xueli | chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2023-02-04

A man passes a poster of Wandering Earth II at a cinema in Shenyang, Liaoning province,on Jan 23, 2023. [Photo/VCG]

Unsurprisingly, The Wandering Earth 2 has been a blockbuster since its release on the first day of the Chinese New Year, taking in an eye-watering 2.9 billion yuan in 11 days, breaking 36 records and achieving 91 milestones in Chinese film. Ever since the genre-defining The Wandering Earth established China as a truly viable producer of large-scale and ambitious sci-fi films in the spring of 2019, sci-fi film production has truly taken off in China and matured itself with numerous mind-blowing attempts in film and television with works such as The Cataclysm and the newly-released Three Body TV series.

Directed by Frant Gwo and based on Liu Cixin's novel, The Wandering Earth 2 is a prequel, the backstory that leads up to the first film. The rapidly expanding Sun is devouring the entire solar system, posing imminent crises and existential threats that put mankind on the brink of extinction. To cling to the chance of survival, people start looking for solutions under the leadership of the United Earth Government, but their plans to save humanity begin to diverge and conflicts between different parties arise, mainly around the hesitation between the Moving Mountain Project which aims at moving Earth away from its current solar system and the Digital Life Project that looks to preserving human consciousness on computers. Clinging to the belief that "A civilization without men is meaningless", China insists on supporting the former one despite mounting tensions and succeeds in feasibility trials that convince the rest of the world and unite different nations into one human nation to implement the Moving Mountain Project.

As a sequel, The Wandering Earth 2 is more than just filling for the first film's blanks, connecting plot line dots and unfolding the full picture. In my opinion, unlike most sequel movies, it progresses greatly compared to the first one in terms of aesthetics, imagination, philosophy and cultural depth.

Empowered by stunning special effects and wild imagination, the film offers breath-taking cinematic spectacles full of gigantic spaceships and drone swarm battles and visualizes some of the technological wonders that, in the past, only appeared in sci-fi books such as the "space elevator". It is inspiring to see the huge improvement in the Chinese film industry and film-making technology. Furthermore, the imagination is not groundless, but comes from reality. In fact, China's progress in space technology over recent years has provided fertile soil and many raw materials for sci-fi film creation. In turn, this advanced imagination may even lead to technological development in the future.

If the hard tech is what strikes awe into the people's hearts, the Chinese philosophy behind the scene is what makes people contemplate. We've seen enough western apocalyptic narratives in mega-budget worldwide blockbusters most closely associated with Hollywood productions. But this film presents a disaster story from an oriental point of view, where humans work as a team to face the overwhelming crisis. No hero can save the Earth single-handedly; still, every effort matters. And the international unity and solidarity highly emphasized in the film takes root in the real world and are consistent with China's current attitude and approach in a world of changes unseen in a century.

It is very delicate and sophisticated how Chinese philosophy and culture are embedded throughout the whole narrative, including small details that are subtly woven into the patchwork quilt of the movie, such as the naming of the self-rescue projects. The Moving Mountain Project, for example, originated from an ancient Chinese fable, Yugong Yishan, illustrating the point that one strong-willed man can't move mountains but, as long as generations of mankind work together, nothing is impossible. This is only one of the manifestations of the sincere Chinese wish for a long-lasting human civilization and for Chinese ancient wisdom to be applied in today's world.

Apart from these thoughtful details, more explicit advocates of the Chinese approach toward a world of turmoil are put forward in Zhou's speech about the once-broken-but-healed human femur, "In times of crisis, unity above all. Remember the day that people's courage transcends history". In line with the idea of a community with a shared future of mankind, the film vividly depicts some of the most touching and powerful scenes where senior astronauts of all nations sacrifice themselves to ignite the nuclear bombs, and joint efforts are made in reconnecting the Internet to blast the Earth out of its orbit and off on a hundred-generation wandering journey in search of a new home. United we stand, divided we fall. This is even truer today after the humanities' three-year war against the COVID-19 pandemic, as courage and solidarity are the only way out, in science fiction or in reality.

Indeed, the world is undergoing unprecedented transformations and posing great challenges to every single one of us. I've never been a pessimist, but truly, if we don't see ourselves as one human nation soon enough to focus on matters of life and death such as climate change, but continues starting wars with each other in the name of national security, we are going to be buried in the graves we dig for ourselves before the Earth falls apart. That's why I feel great pride to see that China is shouldering its responsibility in global governance as a major country and plays its part in calling forth peace and unity both in the film and in reality.

Overall, The Wandering Earth 2 is marvelous in many ways, including the outstanding visuals and acoustics, compelling narrative and, most importantly, a much more "universal" human value that raises itself to a whole new level of the same genre. I believe both the Chinese people and the world are awaiting what comes next for Chinese cinema.

The author is a student from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.

Grotesque bigotry

Editorial Published February 5, 2023

FREEDOM to profess one’s faith is guaranteed by the Constitution of Pakistan. However, for the country’s Ahmadi minority, this freedom is severely curtailed, and instead, the group is faced with intense persecution. One example of this ugly bigotry manifested itself in Karachi recently, when an Ahmadi place of worship in Saddar was attacked by a mob. In a highly disturbing video purportedly capturing the incident, individuals can be seen attacking the building and tearing down parts of it while shouting slogans. This is not the first such incident; a similar attack targeting an Ahmadi facility took place last month, in Karachi’s Martin Quarters area. The sad fact is that there is a long history of Ahmadi persecution in this country. Members of the community have been murdered in targeted killings, there have been calls for an economic boycott of the group, while gravestones of community members have also been desecrated. Perhaps the most brutal attacks in recent memory were the ones in 2010 targeting two places of worship in Lahore, which resulted in nearly 100 fatalities. It is not difficult to understand what breeds this hatred, as there are groups and individuals in this country whose sole aim appears to be persecution of Ahmadis, particularly by misusing the blasphemy laws against the community.

The problem is that if violent extremism is allowed to fester even after devouring whole communities, one day the obscurantists will come for everyone who does not agree with their blinkered worldview. The bloodbath in Peshawar’s Police Lines is a clear example of this terrifying possibility. At least five people have been held for attacking the Ahmadi facility in Saddar. However, the bigger task for the state is to provide protection to the community at large, while working to extricate radicalism from society. The latter is a particularly tall order, when the state itself had for decades nurtured the hard right. The political class, the establishment as well as clerics need to take some bold moves to ensure that vulnerable communities can live in peace, and are not hounded by those bent on eliminating them. Left unattended, the violent vigilantism witnessed in Karachi will one day morph into an uncontrollable ogre. There may still be time to save the nation from sinking into the toxic vortex of obscurantism and violence, should the ruling classes prioritise this goal.

Published in Dawn, February 5th, 2023

Blue Pakistan

Yasir Masood

Published February 4, 2023

‘BLUE economy’ refers to sustainable and inclusive water resource management that covers all coastal activities, marine-related industries, and services that could generate revenue and bolster socioeconomic well-being.

It also encompasses the energy (oil, gas and renewables), shipping, maritime, aquaculture, fisheries and tourism sectors and integrates environmental management, economic growth, and aquatic ecosystem sustainability. Over three billion people across the world rely on marine resources for their livelihoods.

Pakistan is presently confronted with one of its most formidable economic challenges. Given the circumstances, it seriously needs to diversify its economy to put the country back on track. Blue economy is a promising area that could strengthen Pakistan’s financial, geostrategic and geo-economic standing.

Here we discuss Pakistan’s blue economy, including its underutilisation. How can decision-makers and key players tap this economy’s potential for a self-sufficient and sustainable Pakistan, all the while keeping the country’s myriad challenges in mind?

Despite having the potential to generate more than $100 billion, Pakistan’s current blue landscape is limited to generating an estimated $1bn. Most of it comes from fisheries, coastal tourism, and marine revenue, but the lack of modern industries such as energy and minerals restricts its potential. Meanwhile, regional states are making billions of dollars from this sector.

The country’s maritime potential remains to be tapped.

Owing to last year’s devastating floods, there is an immediate need to tackle food insecurity in Pakistan. The coastal areas can be used to breed fish for commercial purposes, with a potential yearly value of $2bn; but, seafood export revenues are now only around $450 million, according to estimates.

Pakistan hasn’t fully capitalised on its proximity to the Arabian Sea and the Indus river basin, despite the rising demand for aquaculture products from domestic, Chinese and Indian markets.

Inadequate financial resources, political uncertainty, weak enforcement of the law, technological gaps, and poor awareness of and expertise in sustainable methods have hindered the country from harnessing its blue potential. This in turn is contributing to greater food insecurity.

Blue economy emphasises sustainable development while preserving biomass like marine life and coastal resources. This could help solve the country’s protein shortage by increasing seafood consumption. Meanwhile, the mangrove system is also said to have the potential to yield $20m.

Pakistan’s coastline is 1,050 kilometres long and has an Exclusive Economic Zone of 290,000 square kilometres.

The country’s location on the Arabian Sea, bordering India to the east and Iran and Afghanistan to the west can make it the hub for shipping goods across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa and beyond, helping the economy profit from regional trade and global markets.

It also offers transportation, tourism and ecological services like storm protection and carbon storage, which can boost local economies.

Pakistan has been unable to realise its potential as a marine hub. Reports on the subject have cited the reasons as: poor port access, limited finances for infrastructure renovations and modernisation, outdated policies discouraging foreign investment, fragmented governance, marine pollution, degradation of the mangrove forests, a lack of local technical and professional skills and an incompetent managerial and bureaucratic set-up.

Figures estimate that maritime tourism accounts for $300m of GDP. Current maritime revenue projections are far behind India’s at $6bn and Bangladesh’s at $5.6bn. Unfortunately, earnings from Pakistan’s tourism industry are a mere 0.4 per cent of GDP, compared to Thailand’s at 18pc, Malaysia’s at 6pc, and Sri Lanka’s at 6pc. Unfortunately, it is South Asia’s least competitive travel and tourism country.

According to some experts, if the travel and coastal tourism sectors were to be improved to international levels, they could even contribute up to 10pc of GDP by the next decade or so.

Under CPEC, Gwadar Port when fully functional offers great potential to aid in revitalising Pakistan’s blue assets.

Gwadar’s airport development, free-trade zones, IT parks, BPO operations, energy production and storage, mineral extraction and export, and electricity linkages through an industrial corridor could accelerate local economic growth through resource mobilisation and attract substantial foreign direct investment.

If Pakistan were to achieve long-term growth and reap dividends from the blue economy, it has to adopt and put into practice a rigorous, localised, and sustainable policymaking framework on a war footing; a framework that draws inspiration from the achievements of its South Asian neighbourhood, Asean, and beyond.

The writer is an Islamabad-based political economist.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2023

The IMF in perspective

Sakib Sherani Published February 4, 2023

A POPULAR refrain of policymakers, many TV anchors and most public commentators in Pakistan is to vilify the IMF and to blame it for the country’s myriad economic woes ranging from the rupee ‘devaluation’ to inflation. To what extent is the IMF responsible for our predicament, and are the Bretton Woods Institutions (the IMF and World Bank) indeed agents of influence and control acting at the behest of the US?

To answer the second question first. According to the US Army Special Operations Forces: Unconventional Warfare Field Manual (2006), “The instruments of national power as codified in US policy and doctrine include DIME and DIMEFIL”.

DIMEFIL stands for diplomatic, informational, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement. The manual goes on to state that “The application of economic or financial incentives is among the most powerful ideas in the US arsenal of power.”

On the use of international financial institutions (IFIs) by the US to achieve military and/or foreign policy objectives, the manual states: “At the highest levels of diplomatic and financial interaction, the USG’s [United States Government] ability to influence international financial institutions — with corresponding effects to exchange rates, interest rates, credit availability, and money supplies — can […] dissuade adversary nation-state governments from supporting specific actors in the UWOA.” Note: UWOA = Unconventional Warfare Operational Area.

Echoing these objectives and reiterating the role of the IFIs in US foreign policy, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, One Hundred Eleventh Congress — March 10, 2010, states that “The international financial institutions (IFIs) have traditionally been an important element of US foreign policy.”

It goes on to say that “The international financial institutions present the United States with an opportunity to maintain its influence, address national security issues, and provide global leadership in an era when the American economy may not be the overwhelming source of power it once was.”

IMF is part of the US-constructed ‘rules-based’ global order, but our woes are homegrown.

Where the IFIs fit into the US-constructed global “rules-based order”, meant to exert and assert its influence in the world, is quite clear from the sampling of quotes from its declassified doctrinal documents. In the case of Pakistan and the IMF, the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office’s first report from 2002, titled Evaluation of Prolonged Use of IMF Resources, has the following observation on Fund engagement with the country: “In particular, decisions regarding the IMF’s involvement in Pakistan appear to have been heavily influenced by geopolitical considerations.”

The only other country whose Fund programmes came close to being “heavily influenced by geopolitical considerations” at the time was the Philippines.

The foregoing evidence should close the chapter on whether the IFIs, in particular the two Bretton Woods ‘sisters’, are aligned with US foreign policy objectives and whether their policy advice can be agenda-driven.

However, despite the evidence on how the BWIs are designed to further US interests, a large part of the conventional wisdom in this country regarding the IMF’s role in bringing Pakistan to its recurrent situation is self-serving.

It is designed to avoid introspection, or to accept culpability and responsibility for poor policy choices over a protracted period, and instead shift the blame entirely to external agents and exogenous shocks.

I have previously referred to this reflex as a manifestation of an external locus of control, ie a psychological stance in which some individuals and societies believe that their life outcomes are determined by external factors beyond their control.

As I wrote in a recent opinion piece in this newspaper (‘Our elite’s bankruptcy’), Pakistan has spent an estimated 34 years in IMF care since 1958. To the best of my knowledge, this is the single most protracted use of IMF resources by any country in the world. It would be useful to introspect if the IMF has arm-twisted us into this situation, or whether our collective failure to collect taxes, promote exports, curb runaway consumption, provide a conducive environment for private investment etc is the actual cause of our crisis-prone underdevelopment.

The real question is: with the need for economic reform so well-established from early on, why has Pakistan been unable to move the needle with orwithout IMF programmes? After all, if it has spent 34 years in various Fund arrangements (and the IMF, and not Pakistanis themselves, was a roadblock to real reform according to the conventional wisdom), then it has spent 42 years without the IMF.

What reforms are visible that can be attributed to over four decades of living without the ‘tyranny’ of the Fund?

An illustrative case of a country getting its act together and fixing its house after its last encounter with the IMF 30 years ago is provided by our neighbour India.

In 1991, after experiencing a severe balance-of-payments crisis and turning to the Fund for a Stand-By Arrangement, India began implementing structural reforms. It has never returned to the Fund since, becoming an economic powerhouse within the past three decades.

A corollary to the conventional wisdom in the country regarding the BWIs is that the loans taken by Pakistan over the decades from these institutions are ‘odious’, since they were ‘forced’ onto the country.

This is completely disingenuous as project loans from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank etc have helped finance the construction of Pakistan’s major physical infrastructure over the past four decades, including the Tarbela and Mangla dams, the country’s railways network, its irrigation system, and road and highways infrastructure among other critical projects.

The conclusion is straightforward. The IMF and World Bank are agenda-driven. IMF programme design IS flawed in that it creates perverse incentives and has unintended consequences in tax collection and the energy sector — setting up negative feedback loops that have worsened rather than helped the underlying structural problems.

Nonetheless, there is no escaping the fact that Pakistan’s predicament is of its own making. The sooner this is accepted by our elites and policymakers, the sooner we can begin our journey back from the edge of the abyss.

The writer has been a member of several past economic advisory councils under different prime ministers.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2023