ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has recovered more than $370 million in a nationwide campaign against electricity theft, Pakistani state media reported on Sunday.
The South Asian nation’s power sector has been plagued by high rates of electricity theft and distribution losses, resulting in accumulating debts across the production chain.
In March, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi announced that authorities had launched a “massive crackdown” against electricity and gas theft, aiming for fair distribution of utilities and access to all citizens.
“In a countrywide campaign against power pilferage, 105 billion ($377 million) rupees have been recovered,” the state-run Radio Pakistan broadcaster reported. “More than 83,000 individuals involved in power theft have been arrested.”
From June 30 till July 17, authorities collected more than Rs1 billion from power pilferers in Punjab’s Lahore, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Multan cities as well as in the federal capital of Islamabad, according to the report.
Another Rs430 million were recovered from Peshawar, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Quetta during this period. This was a result of actions taken by the government to revive the country’s economy and bring people out of the power crisis.
Relevant institutions were determined to continue their operations until complete elimination of power theft from the country, it added.
The report comes days after Pakistan reached a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a new $7 billion loan.
Energy sector debt has already been a main issue that the IMF has highlighted in tackling Pakistan’s fiscal deficit, telling the South Asian nation to prevent further accumulation of circular debt in its power sector arising from subsidies and unpaid bills.
The lender has asked to implement reforms to reduce costs by improving electricity transmission and distribution, moving captive power into the grid, improving governance, and combating theft.
ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Muhammad Aurangzeb said on Wednesday Pakistan was undertaking structural and financial reforms to create a conducive environment for foreign investment and stabilize the national economy while meeting with a delegation of international investors led by the top JP Morgan official in Pakistan.
Last year, Pakistan set up the Special Investment Facilitation Council, a hybrid civil-military body, to encourage international businesses to explore opportunities in the country by streamlining investment procedures amid prolonged economic challenges.
The finance minister briefed the visiting delegation about Pakistan’s improving macroeconomic indicators, including a 14 percent rise in exports, a decline in inflation to 9.6 percent and an overall decrease in the current account deficit.
He also pointed out the improvement in Pakistan’s sovereign credit ratings, saying they reflected a stable and promising economic outlook.
“The country’s economic growth is underpinned by robust fiscal discipline, inflation management, and a favorable balance of payments,” he told the delegation, according to an official statement.
He informed the government was also trying to broaden the tax base, cut down the public sector size and proceed with the privatization drive.
“These reforms are designed to create a more conducive environment for foreign investment and to ensure the long-term stability of the economy,” he added.
The visiting delegation discussed a range of potential investment areas, including renewable energy, information technology, infrastructure development and the financial sector.
They maintained that Pakistani market had immense potential, adding the strategic location of the country made it a gateway to regional markets where foreign investors were eager to explore opportunities.
The foreign minister welcomed the delegation’s interest in investing in Pakistan and assured its members of the government full support.
ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said on Wednesday it was working to provide seamless online connectivity to strengthen the information technology sector and enhance ease of doing business amid public uproar over slow Internet speed affecting nearly 2.37 million freelancers in the country.
The government has identified information technology as a priority sector for attracting foreign investment and boosting export revenue. However, Internet speed in Pakistan has dropped by 30-40 percent over the past few weeks, according to the Wireless and Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan amid reports that the government is installing a national firewall to block “anti-state propaganda.”
The situation has raised concerns within the IT sector, especially among the freelance community, leading its national association members to visit the PTA Headquarters on Wednesday to discuss the issue with the authority’s top official.
“Chairman PTA, Major General (R) Hafeez Ur Rehman, extended a warm welcome to the Pakistan Freelancers Association’s delegation and apprised that PTA is proactively working on ease of doing business for IT sector,” said an official statement circulated after the meeting.
“In this regard IP [Internet protocol] addresses for VPNs [virtual private networks] are being registered for software houses, banks, businesses and freelancers to ensure that in case of any access disruption in the country, businesses are not affected,” it added.
The statement noted that VPN registration was free and could be completed online, with a processing time of two to three days.
The government announced the VPN registration process toward the end of last month amid complaints of prolonged Internet disruptions.
According to data from the central bank, Pakistani freelancers earned $397.3 million in foreign remittances during the fiscal year 2021-22.
The amount is likely underreported, as much of the freelance income is received as home remittances.
Bangladesh defeat sees Pakistan fall to 8th in Test rankings
Pakistan have fallen to worst Test ranking in nearly six decades after shock 2-0 series defeat to low-ranked Bangladesh
Bangladesh inflicted a six-wicket defeat on the home team in the second Test in Rawalpindi on Tuesday
Updated 04 September 2024
AFP
KARARCHI: Pakistan fell to their worst Test ranking in nearly six decades on Wednesday, the International Cricket Council said, after their shock 2-0 series defeat to low-ranked Bangladesh.
Bangladesh inflicted a six-wicket defeat on the home team in the second Test in Rawalpindi on Tuesday, their first series win against Pakistan.
“Pakistan dropped two places — from sixth to eighth — in the Test rankings after suffering a shock series loss at home to Bangladesh,” the International Cricket Council (ICC) said.
The ICC said it was “their lowest rankings since 1965” in the 12-team table, which is topped by Australia followed by India and England.
Bangladesh are ninth in the latest rankings
There are now no Pakistan bowlers ranked in the top 10 after paceman Shaheen Shah Afridi fell to 11th from his ninth place before the Bangladesh series.
Wicketkeeper-batter Mohammad Rizwan is the only Pakistani remaining in the top 10 batting rankings, while Babar Azam dropped three places to 12th.
Azam managed just 64 runs in the two Tests against Bangladesh.
From Egypt to Pakistan, Coke and Pepsi boycott over Gaza lifts local sodas
In Pakistan, local colas like Cola Next and Pakola soared in popularity to become about 12% of soft drinks category from 2.5% previously
Cola Next’s factories cannot meet the sharp surge in demand, CEO of brand’s parent company Mezan Beverages said in an interview
Updated 04 September 2024
Reuters
KARACHI/CAIRO/NEW YORK: Coca-Cola and rival PepsiCo. spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades building demand for their soft drinks in Muslim-majority countries including Egypt to Pakistan.
Now, both face a challenge from local sodas in those countries due to consumer boycotts that target the globe-straddling brands as symbols of America, and by extension Israel, at a time of war in Gaza.
In Egypt, sales of Coke have cratered this year, while local brand V7 exported three times as many bottles of its own cola in the Middle East and the wider region than last year. In Bangladesh, an outcry forced Coca-Cola to cancel an ad campaign against the boycott. And across the Middle East, Pepsi’s rapid growth evaporated after the Gaza war started in October.
Pakistani corporate executive Sunbal Hassan kept Coke and Pepsi off her wedding menu in Karachi in April. She said she didn’t want to feel her money had reached the tax coffers of the United States, Israel’s staunchest ally.
“With the boycott, one can play a part by not contributing to those funds,” Hassan said. Instead, she served her wedding guests Pakistani brand Cola Next.
An Egyptian walks next to the bottles of Coca-Cola and other products on shelves, in Cairo, Egypt, on August 27, 2024. (REUTERS)
She is not alone. While market analysts say it is hard to put a dollar figure on lost sales and PepsiCo. and Coca-Cola still have growing businesses in several countries in the Middle East, Western beverage brands suffered a 7 percent sales decline in the first half of the year across the region, market researcher NielsenIQ says.
An Egyptian supermarket owner shows bottles of Egypt's local beverage brands Spiro Spathis and Diva Masr at his store, in Cairo, Egypt on September 1, 2024. (REUTERS)
In Pakistan, Krave Mart, a leading delivery app, has seen local cola rivals like Cola Next and Pakola soar in popularity to become about 12 percent of the soft drinks category, founder Kassim Shroff told Reuters this month. Before the boycott, the figure was closer to 2.5 percent.
Shroff said Pakola, which is ice-cream soda flavored, made up most of the purchases before the boycott. He declined to provide figures for Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. sales.
Consumer boycotts date back at least as far as an 18th century anti-slavery sugar protest in Britain. The strategy was used in the 20th century to fight apartheid in South Africa and has been widely wielded against Israel through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
A Pepsi refrigerator is seen at a local corner store with Pepsi and its drinks displayed for sale in Isa Town, Bahrain, August on 30, 2024. (REUTERS)
Many consumers shunning Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. cite US support of Israel over decades, including in the current, ongoing war with Hamas. “Some consumers are deciding to make different options in their purchases because of the political perception,” PepsiCo. CEO Ramon Laguarta told Reuters in a July 11 interview, adding that boycotts are “impacting those particular geographies” such as Lebanon, Pakistan and Egypt.
“We will manage through it over time,” he said. “It’s not meaningful to our top line and bottom line at this point.”
PepsiCo’s total revenue from its Africa, Middle East and South Asia division was $6 billion in 2023, earnings releases show. The same year, Coca-Cola’s revenue from its Europe, Middle East and Africa region was $8 billion, company filings show.
In the six months following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that triggered the invasion of Gaza, PepsiCo. beverage volumes in the Africa, Middle East and South Asia division barely grew, after notching up 8 percent and 15 percent growth in the same quarters of 2022/23, the company said. Volumes of Coke sold in Egypt declined by double-digit percentage points in the six months ended June 28, according to data from Coca-Cola HBC, which bottles there. In the same period last year, volumes rose in high single digits.
Coca-Cola has said it does not fund military operations in Israel or any country. In response to a Reuters request, PepsiCo. said neither the company “nor any of our brands are affiliated with any government or military in the conflict.”
Palestinian-American businessman Zahi Khouri founded Ramallah-based Coca-Cola bottler National Beverage Company, which sells Coke in the West Bank. The company’s $25 million plant in Gaza, opened in 2016, has been destroyed in the war, he said. Employees were unharmed, he said.
Khouri said boycotts were a matter of personal choice but didn’t really help Palestinians. In the West Bank itself, he said, they had limited sales impact.
“Only ending the occupation would help the situation,” said Khouri, who supports the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Israel’s government did not respond to a request for comment. HISTORICAL TARGETS
The big soda companies are no stranger to pressure among the Muslim world’s hundreds of millions of consumers. After Coke opened a factory in Israel in the 1960s, it was hit by an Arab League boycott that lasted until the early 1990s and benefited Pepsi for years in the Middle East.
Coke still lags Pepsi’s market share in Egypt and Pakistan, according to market research firm GlobalData.
PepsiCo, which entered Israel in the early 1990s, itself faced boycotts when it purchased Israel’s SodaStream for $3.2 billion in 2018.
In recent years though, Muslim-majority countries with young, rising populations have provided some of the soda giants’ fastest growth. In Pakistan alone, Coca-Cola says it has invested $1 billion since 2008, yielding years of double-digit sales growth. PepsiCo. had similar gains, according to securities filings.
Now, both are losing ground to local brands.
Cola Next, which is cheaper than Coke and Pepsi, changed its ad slogan in March to “Because Cola Next is Pakistani,” emphasizing its local roots.
Cola Next’s factories cannot meet the surge in demand, Mian Zulfiqar Ahmed, the CEO of the brand’s parent company, Mezan Beverages, said in an interview. He declined to share volume figures.
Zulfiqar Ahmed, CEO of Mezan Beverages (Pvt) Ltd, that makes Cola NEXT, speaks with Reuters during an interview at his office in Karachi, Pakistan, on May 3, 2024. (REUTERS)
Restaurants, Karachi’s private schools association and university students have all taken part in anti-Coca-Cola actions, eroding goodwill built through sponsorship of Coke Studio, a popular music show in Pakistan.
Exports of Egyptian cola V7 have tripled this year compared to 2023, founder Mohamed Nour said in an interview. Nour, a former Coca-Cola executive who left the company after 28 years in 2020, said V7 was now sold in 21 countries.
Sales in Egypt, where the product has only been available since July 2023, were up 40 percent, Nour said.
Paul Musgrave, an associate professor of government at Georgetown University in Qatar, warned of long-term damage to consumer loyalty due to boycotts. “If you break habits, it’s going to be harder to win you back in the long run,” he said, without giving an estimate of the financial cost to the companies. BANGLADESH BACKFIRE
In Bangladesh, Coke launched advertising showing a shopkeeper talking about the company’s operations in Palestine.
After a public outcry over perceived insensitivity, Coke pulled the ad in June and apologized. In response to a question from Reuters, the company said the campaign “missed the mark.”
The ad made the boycott worse, said one Bangladeshi advertising executive, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Other American brands seen as symbols of Western culture, such as McDonalds and Starbucks, also face anti-Israel boycotts.
Market share for global brands fell 4 percent in the first half of 2024 in the Middle East, according to NielsenIQ. But the protests have been more visible against the widely-available sodas.
As well as boycotts, inflation and economic turmoil in Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh eroded consumers’ buying power even before the war, making cheaper local brands more appealing.
Last year, Coke’s market share in the consumer sector in Pakistan fell to 5.7 percent from 6.3 percent in 2022, according to GlobalData, while Pepsi’s fell to 10.4 percent from 10.8 percent. FUTURE PLANS
Coca-Cola and its bottlers, and PepsiCo, still see the countries as important areas for growth, particularly as Western markets slow down.
Despite the boycotts, Coke invested another $22 million upgrading technology in Pakistan in April, it said in a press release at the time.
Coca-Cola’s bottler in Pakistan said to investors in May that it remained “positive about the opportunity” the world’s fifth most-populous country offers, and that it invested in the market with a long-term commitment.
In recent weeks, PepsiCo. reintroduced a brand called Teem soda, traditionally lemon-lime flavored, in Pakistani market, a spokesperson confirmed. The product is now available in a cola flavor with “Made in Pakistan” printed prominently on the label.
A view of a passenger bus with an advertisement of TEEM soft drink moves along a road in Karachi, Pakistan on September 1, 2024. (REUTERS)
The companies are also still injecting the Coke and Pepsi brands into the fabric of local communities by sponsoring charities, musicians and cricket teams.
Those moves are key to Coke and Pepsi keeping a toehold in the countries long-term even as they face setbacks now, Georgetown’s Musgrave said.
“Anything you can do to make yourself an ally or presence, a part of a community,” helps, he said.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani student Ayesha Mumtaz has won the bronze medal at the Asian Junior and School Boxing Championship in Abu Dhabi after defeating Vietnamese opponent Thi Hong Yen Nguyen in the quarterfinal, state media reported on Wednesday.
The boxing championship, organized by the Asian Boxing Confederation, is a tournament for young athletes taking place in the Al Ain City of Abu Dhabi from August 27 to September 10.
“A Pakistani schoolgirl Ayesha Mumtaz has won a bronze medal at the Asian Junior and School Boxing Championship in Abu Dhabi,” Radio Pakistan said on Wednesday. “She defeated Thi Hong Yen Nguyen of Vietnam in the quarterfinal.”
According to local media reports, Mumtaz competed and demonstrated “exceptional abilities” in the 46kg weight category as the only participant from Pakistan, with her :well-executed” jabs proving decisive against the Vietnamese opponent.
Pakistan Boxing Federation President Muhammad Khalid Mahmood congratulated Mumtaz on her win, saying her triumph was a testament to the potential of Pakistani athletes.
“The PBF remains committed to fostering young talent across the country and anticipates further success from Ayesha Mumtaz and other emerging athletes,” media reports quoted him as saying.
The only other female medalist from Pakistan in the Asian Boxing Championships was Hadiya Kamal, who won a bronze in the 2022 edition due to a direct entry into the semifinals, state media said.
