Pakistan Economy Challenges and Prospects

Keywords: pakistan economy strengths, pakistan economy analysis

Geographically, Pakistan is an asian country situated in the south sharing borders with China and India who are considered to be one of the biggest markets in the world. Pakistan has an estimated population of 180 million. It sixth biggest country in the world in terms of population with the fifth biggest army in the world. It has an approximate area of 803,940 km2. The estimated GDP of Pakistan is $164 billion and contributes 19.6% to agriculture, 26.8% to industry and 53.7% to services. The country’s per capita income is around $1022. The country’s human development index is 0.52 and external debts rounding off to $50.1 billion.

Strengths

The economy of Pakistan is an agricultural country. It is an agricultural country based on agriculture, textile, services, remittances and cottage industry. The country has a great deal of potential to grow and become a better country in the world. The current rate of economic growth is 2% that has come down from 6.8% achieved during the period of 2006-2007. The last two decades has particularly seen the telecommunications industry to grow and boom throughout the country. Even geographically, Pakistan is given great importance. The country holds a great amount of natural resoursces. It has the best agricultural system. The country has four seasons. It has a great potential to expand its tourism department as it has one of the highest mountain ranges, coastlines and vast deserts.

Weakness

Despite all the potentials and strenghts, the country is suffering a great deal from its weaknesses. Every year a big portion of the budget goes towards defence and foreign debts. The rest of the budget that has to go towards the welfare of the country suffers from corruption which is one of the biggest threats to the country’s welfare. Another threat to the country is its lack of action to control terrorism that has weakened the roots of the country and has rocked its roots. The administration has lacked to provide essantial ways to better the the agriculture. The educational system has failed disasterously though the private institutes have boomed. But the administration has failed to provide education to poors. The country is currently suffering from providing ample amount of electricity and gas due to its lack of development in the sectors.

Human Resource in Pakistan

Pakistan has been in international news headlines for a variety of reasons other than for its human resource efforts. Observations suggest that increased international support and a reverse brain drain phenomenon continue to contribute to the HR efforts in Pakistan.

There has been a significant increase in the application of HR at community, national, and regional levels (McLean et al. 2006). The November 2008 conference of the Academy of HR in Asia also intends to focus on the role of HR in sustainable development. Thus, it is important to examine HR not only in corporate, but also in government and social settings, especially in developing countries (Budhwani and McLean 2005).

In Pakistan, HR is influenced by lack of funds and qualified HR staff. The government of Pakistan allocates a small amount of budget for HR activities (Aftab 2007). However, the nonprofit sector, a public-private partnership sector, seems to be more organized in its HR efforts.This paper sheds light on HR in Pakistan and how it can be developed by using local knowledge and international support and expertise.

Pakistan came into being on 14 August 1947 and today we are struggling for sustainable development. Over the years Pakistan faced many challenges and the time of independence there were many genuine problems but 59 years were not less for developing and managing the human resource effectively. Now we are standing in a situation where our government setups have failed to deliver and achieve a level of excellence. The private local companies have HR department but not properly functional. The Army is a little organized but is over indulging in the areas that are not their domain .The multinational are better because they are following the same internatioally used management tools.

The past practices can not be overlooked as they have created a bunch of unskilled qualified man power and unproductive organizations. The issues or problems in the human recourse management are in all the functions of HRM discipline: 

Telenor Pakistan

Telenor Pakistan, a wholly owned subsidiary of Telenor ASA, launched its operations in March 2005. One of the leading telecom operators providing prepaid, postpaid and value added services to seven million customers,

Human resource at Telenor Pakistan

As a company, telenor has worked its way towards its product by providing a different approach and creativity. Their services and advertising campaigns were also not traditional. Telenor Pakistan has been able to exercise unconventional operations to achieve productivity with a high output. The company has always kept in mind to provide quality service and simplicity in the solutions.

One of the greatest achievements of Telenor is great performance of its employees by providing them an environment like a home. The company exercises true equality towards its employees. There is no traditional way of communication rather the company exercises communications at all levels within their employees and providing all with equal priviliges. The employees don’t have to be dressed formally unless they have to communicate to external people. Thus providing the employees an environment that is like a home. This is one of the greatest factors within the company that helps them achieve their levels of productivity by a great deal of contribution.

Beside these, there are other techniques the company has adopted at Telenor Pakistan:

• Unique and very well structured Recruitment and Selection methods, driven by competency-based screening
• Separatem OrganizationalDevelopment (OD) function
• Revamping the human resource management division name with Human Capital Division (HCD)
• Unique Selection & Recruitment Methods

Regardless of the recruitment processes taking place at other companies. Telenor Pakistan has adopted and the conditions and is carrying out an unique recruitment process to get the most appropriate people to the positions vacant in the company. The recuritment in the company goes through a three level process that is foundation, development and growth. The recruitment process now gets even harder by not just looking at the high GPAs or prestigious degrees but by sensing the best personality with all the abilities required by the company to benefit its economic value. The company has rebranded its recruitment process from traditional human resourse management to Human Capital Division as it refers to the stock of skills and knowledge and the ability to perform labour.

Conclusion:

Telenor has not only initiated new concepts and world class human resource management techniques, but also with its on-campus recruitment seminars and the Telenor Alumni and Ambassador Programs, the company is always on the lookout to maximize its reach in terms of its outward orientation There is also an important point raised that Telenor provides 100% focus on talen as they say “we hire for talent, and train for skills.

Human resource practice in Telenor Pakistan

Habib Bank LTD Pakistan

Habib Bank is the largest bank in Pakistan. It has over 1425 branches throughout Pakistan and 55 branches across the world. The company is referred to as HBL. The company’s head quarters are at Habib Bank Plaza Karachi Pakistan. Habib bank continues to take strong hold in Pakistan’s domestic market with shares over 40%. The bank also dominates in providing loans to small industries and traders and agricultural loans to farmers. The bank also controls 55% of inward foreign remittances.

Human Resource management structure:

As with the HRM department of any other company. The HRM department of HBL is also very active and is considered to be the best in Pakistan. The structure of the bank from top to bottom is as:

One President (CEO) has 10 Senior Executive Vice-Presidents. They in turn have 29 Executive Vice Presidents working under and 154 senior Vice Presidents. They inturn have 420 vice presidents and then 831 Assistant vice Presidents. They inturn have 2350 officers of Grade 1 working under them, 4108 officers of grade 2 work under them and 3364 officers of Grade 3 come under them. The next level has 10, 658 clerical/non-clerical employees. The total employees as per 1999 balance sheet is 23, 022.

 

Job Analysis:

The procedure for determining the duties and skill requirements of a job and the kind of person who should be hired for it is called Job analysis. Job analysis is every important as job analysis information is used in Selecting and recruiting, compensation, performance appraisal, training and in resolving other issues which HBL faces. HBL takes Job analysis services from Sidat Hyder Morshed Association (SHMA) which is the biggest HR consulting firm in Pakistan. The methods which are used in collecting job analysis information are

• The interview
• Questionnaires

The Interview for job analysis:

Interview is a big source in collecting information in the job analysis. Individual employees, group of employees and supervisors with vast knowledge about jobs are interviewed. The format of interview is Structured and unstructured. In structured interview a set of sequence of questions are followed by interviewers and in unstructured type of interview the interviewer pursues points of interest as they come up in response to questions.

Questionnaires:

In questionnaire the employees solve the fill out questionnaires to describe their job-related duties and responsibilities. The formats of questionnaires are either structured or open ended.

Conclusion

The telecom sector has been in boom recenlty in Pakistan, one of the basic reason for the success was the economy of Pakistan,as because of cheap labour the telecom sector was able to provide cheap services to masses. The second reason for success was growing market as the telecom sector was very new in begining of 2000. The main success of Habib Bank Limited was the fact that over the years retail banking was unexplored, till early 2000. Good governance by State bank of Pakistan was another reason for this success. As skilled labour was avaiable at lower cost which made it much easier to the banking sector to grow.