Meanwhile, the protests of powerlooms owners have been entered into the second week. They observed black day and staged protest carrying black flags and banners at front of their factories. Briefing to media, Chaudhry Salamat Ali, Chairman, Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PHMA) North Zone demanded that the export of cotton and yarn should be banned to control the growing day-by-day rates of raw material, which hampering the textile industry and three million labourers livelihood. Chairman, PHMA, North Zone demanded to the government that the export of cotton and yarn should be totally banned till meeting the demands of the domestic sector and should be eliminated the monopolists and capital mafia, who are adding fuel to the fire by their speculative activities ignoring the national interests. Wasim Latif Chairman, and Adil Manzoor Ellahi Vice Chairman Pakistan Textile Exporters Association in a press statement demanded duty free import of polyester fibre to cover the shortage of 20 percent of cotton crop washed away by floods and 30 percent demand supply gap of polyester fibre in the country.

The prices of the entire range of essential kitchen items have jumped up by 10 to 30 percent within last one week in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, according to a survey conducted by Business Recorder. Traders in Rawalpindi/Islamabad wholesale markets told Business Recorder that prices of most of the food items have risen subsequent to the increase in prices of petroleum products.

Briefing the media persons spokesperson to the President Farhatullah Babar said that the meeting was part of the interactive sessions the President has been regularly holding with private entrepreneurs in search of solution to the country's economic woes.Issues ranging from reconstruction of flood areas to inflation and from engaging private entrepreneurs in mega development project to raising equity from stock markets for infrastructure projects were discussed in the meeting, he said.

State Minister for Economic Affairs, Hina Rabbani Khar on Friday said that Pakistan needs $1.93 billion for the recovery and rehabilitation of flood-stricken people. She said this while addressing 'Launching of Pakistan's Floods Relief and Early Recovery Response Plan 2010' ceremony jointly organised by the United Nations (UN) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) here on Friday.

The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) President Sultan Ahmed Chawla has urged the government not to borrow a single penny from the IMF, Word Bank or any other institution in future rather it should seek moratorium for five years to help country get out of loan trap. Pakistan is in critical situation now only due to mismanagement and imposition of one sided decisions and it has been shunting the economy to destabilisation. He said IMF package has only provided the poverty not prosperity.He also emphasised to privatise the Railways, Steel mills and PIA in the vested interest of Pakistan. It will accelerate the economy to boost up in well manner. He also suggested overcoming the crisis of electricity, the offers from China and Iran must be considered. But in the long term dams must be constructed at any cost.

There are three major conditions which the government has failed to comply with. Firstly, failure to begin implementation of the value-added tax, renamed as the Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) by the incumbent Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh in an effort to dispel few domestic controversies over the proposal. Secondly, failure to effect reforms in the energy sector that include full cost recovery through elimination of subsidies not expected to be supported by the general public still smarting under the recent 9 percent escalation in prices of petroleum products, in line with the rise in the international market; and to reduce the subsidy on electricity by increasing the tariff by 2 percent every month until end June 2014. Thirdly, government excessive borrowings from the central bank due to delay in reimbursement of Coalition Support Fund. The implementation of both these policy options requires strong political will owing to fear of a political backlash... Economists no doubt would point out that compliance with these conditions must be viewed as a short-term measure and that the long-term measures must include a long standing demand of the public, that is now echoed by the international donor community: tax the elite across-the-board on the one hand, reduce corruption and budgetary support of the state-owned enterprises and stop government profligacy on the other. According to media reports, the visiting International Monetary Fund (IMF) team has criticised the government's slow progress in complying with two conditions of the November 2008 Stand-By Arrangement (SBA): implementation of the value added tax (reworded as the Reformed General Sales Tax by incumbent Finance Minister Dr Hafeez Sheikh) and power sector reforms that include the ending of all subsidies in an effort to move towards full cost recovery.

Prior to denigrating the IMF for interfering in our macroeconomic policy decision-making, three factors need to be acknowledged. First and foremost, it was the federal government that approached the IMF seeking the SBA; and if reports are accurate, it was the federal government that sought US mediation to convince the IMF to support Pakistan through the 7.3 billion dollar assistance in the first place. Second and related fact is that the economic havoc created by the PML (Q) government and the caretakers in 2007, in a blatant attempt to win over voters for the scheduled February 2008 elections, led them into taking decisions that were untenable from an economic perspective. These decisions included extending a hefty and unsustainable subsidy for petroleum products that seriously compromised the budget deficit, propelling inflation on the one hand and inter-circular debt on the other. Such unsavoury decisions compelled the PPP-led government to seek the SBA in the first place. And third, the IMF conditions that the government has yet to comply with are economically sound given certain assumptions. These include: (i) the refusal of the government to impose a tax on the elite that includes a tax on the income of rich landlords; (ii) the need to improve governance, which must include appointing heads of state-owned entities (SOEs) on merit rather than on the basis of nepotism. The fact that the ruling party has selected heads of SOEs on the basis of nepotism became evident in the National Insurance Company Limited, the Pakistan Steel Mills, OGDCL and the Pakistan International Airlines. Thus significant economies could have been affected if these companies had been headed by competent people who would have ended their heavy reliance on budgetary support; and (iii) reduce non-development expenditure... The latest reports reveal that the federal government would have to raise power tariffs by about 2 percent per month to be able to meet this target, an amount that is expected to have a very high political cost, especially with all the political parties, including those which are in coalition with the government, lamenting the fact that the PPP-led government did not take them into confidence while raising the price of petroleum products by about 9 percent this week.

The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (Aptma) is going to hold a crucial meeting on energy crisis with the Federal government on Monday in a situation where gas supply to industry is already in doldrums ahead of winter season. The Aptma delegation, under the leadership of Chairman Gohar Ejaz, will call on Federal Minister for Textile Farooq Saeed and Federal Minister for Petroleum Naveed Qamar... He said a hurried landing of Federal Petroleum Minister in Lahore during last week had also failed to develop tangible improvement. According to him, the judicious economic contribution of textile industry was far ahead of the fertiliser industry and the CNG pumps, as 15 million direct and indirect workforce is attached to the textile throughout the country.

The government will sign an agreement with American based seed producing company Monsanto by the end of December, 2010, Business Recorder has learnt. The Ministry for Food and Agriculture (MinFa) and the American seed company Monsanto had singed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on April 10, 2010 for providing Bt Cottonseed to Pakistan.

He admitted that the PPP government after coming into power took some unpopular decisions in the larger interest of the country like withdrawing subsidies on utilities to save national economy from crisis. He said that the increase in prices of petroleum products was necessary to avoid deficit of Rs 100 billion.

The Friends of Democratic Pakistan (FoDP) forum has issued a warning to the Government of Pakistan (GoP), saying that its energy crisis would become unmanageable by 2015-16 if it failed to introduce a 5-point recovery plan for immediate overhauling of its entire power infrastructure. The 5-point plan stresses urgent need to rationalise electricity prices and do away with subsidies. Other salient features of the plan are strengthening energy sector governance and regulation, developing energy finance capability, maintain energy efficiency into energy policy and fast track investment projects for energy security. The FoDP noted during the deliberations on a strategy to help Pakistan overcome its energy crisis that Pakistan's energy crisis was worsening fast as its present energy gap of 18 million metric tons of oil (MTEO) will grow to unmanageable 56 MTEO by 2015-16 and simultaneously energy import requirements will increase from $10 billion to $38 billion.

However, Secretary Finance, Salman Siddique claimed that good progress had been made during the policy-level talks with the IMF, saying that "I think we are almost there. We focus more on getting the things out of the way and a meeting of provinces has been convened on Monday to evolve consensus on RGST". Salman said good progress was also made towards budgetary framework. "We will try to place RGST before the current session of the Parliament and there would be a signing off with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (ADB) of reformed plan of energy sector prepared by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission," he said. Replying to a question, he said that Pakistan had received $8.6 billion from the $11.3 billion total augmented SBA. He evaded a question that how the 4.7 percent fiscal deficit for the current fiscal year allowed by the IMF would be achieved. According to him, the tax target for the outgoing fiscal year will be Rs 1,650 to Rs 1,655 billion.

Major businesses including petroleum, textile chemical and other zero-rated sectors are facing serious liquidity problems as the Federal Board of Revenue is reluctant to issue SOP for processing their billions of rupees sales tax refunds, manually, Business Recorder learnt on Thursday.

Federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) has been slashed to Rs150 billion from Rs 280 billion. Both sides have also agreed to cut the provincial annual development programmes by 50 percent... The foreign inflows for budgetary support would fetch only around 0.6 percent of GDP as creditors were not ready to extend money directly to the government owing to lack of confidence in the leadership, said official sources who did not want to be identified. The government would have to arrange most of the financing from domestic sources, they said. Pakistani authorities informed the IMF staff that Sukuk bonds would be issued in the domestic market to raise Rs80 billion in the current fiscal year.

Foreign inflows and developments on an important loan tranche for the country are likely to drive the Karachi share market next week, dealers said. “Foreigners’ interest in the market is expected to offer significant support,” said Saeed Khalid, an analyst at Invest Capital. He said any positive news regarding the fifth tranche from International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other disbursements by International Finance Institutions (IFIs) would also pump up activity in the market. Investors were encouraged by the breakthrough reached in the talks between the IMF and the Pakistani officials, who agreed on revising fiscal deficit target to 4.7 percent, eliminating the circular debt, public listing of power companies and presentation of a new sales tax bill in the Parliament’s current session, dealers said. This offered some hope with respect to the release of the fifth tranche under the Standby Arrangement, they added.

Consumer loans fell 17 percent in financial year 2009-10 as the public income remained hostage at the hands of raging inflation, the central bank said in a recent report.
Though default rose 33 percent in 2009-10 mainly on the back of mortgage and personal loans, it is unlikely to grow further, or at least not with the same rate, amid shrinking consumer credit, analysts said. “Our economy is scantly leveraged and banks have a customer of choice in shape of the government,” said Khurram Shehzad, Analyst at Investcap Securities. “They are taking the easiest way of pumping money to the government.” The government breached IMF quarterly ceilings on borrowing from the banks during first half of the current year. It provides banks a risk-free investment avenue to avoid riskier options, such as consumer loans. “The State Bank needs to wean them off. They (banks) are supposed to channelise funds to the whole economy,” Shehzad said... In a country where only three million people use banks, barely one percent resort to mortgage unlike other developing or developed countries where the rate is much higher.

In a meeting with bed linen exporters, the former minister, Humayun Akhtar Khan, said the interest rates have been cut globally to encourage businesses while in Pakistan, the situation is exactly otherwise. “The economy is sustaining on the IMF loans and the government is blindly following its dictations,” he said. Akhtar said that the foreign direct investment (FDI) must be channelised into export-based industries, not just in telecom and power sectors, to strengthen the economy.

Although tobacco cultivation occupies a relatively small area of 0.27 per cent of the total irrigated land in the country and about 3 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is a chief source of revenue, employment and foreign exchange earnings to the economy. Being a highly labour-intensive crop, about 80 thousand persons are involved in its cultivation, fifty thousand are engaged in cigarette factories of the tobacco industry and another one million find indirect employment through its trading.

Experts also highlighted that reconstruction activity in flood-ravaged areas has so far been slow and limited. They say that so far there has not been any significant increase in demand for cement and other construction materials due to reconstruction efforts.

Drive down towards Taunsa barrage on the Indus River and you might see something peculiar. On the right hand, behind the bund connecting to Taunsa Barrage are acres upon acres of lush farms growing cotton and sugarcane. According to select irrigation officials, the MPA, Sabit Nazim and eyewitnesses living in the area, these areas (ponds) are government land, previously part of the old river bed, and serve as ponds where water can be redirected in case of excessively high water levels during floods. It is also an area with almost no or negligible settlement. On the other hand, the left bank of the river, where the breach took place, is populated. The ponds on the right side, where the eye needs to look far and wide to see human life, are empty of water. No one can confirm who these lands belong to or why they are dry while the left side is flooded. But whisperings of powerful interests that wanted to protect their lands thrive, and the hope is that the tribunal can help prove, or disprove, that this was the case.

Everything was working fine for Faheemullah, 25, a miner from Peer Sabak village of Nowshera district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa till August 2; the day flood hit his area. "I was earning Rs300 after working 12 hours a day in the mountains which was enough money to support my family. Since floods have hit our area everything has finished for me. I have lost my home as well as job. I am ready to work to earn money for my family but the contractors have disappeared as the communication infrastructure has wiped out and there is no way to get marble and precious stones out of mountains", he says, adding, "more than 1500 miners were working only in Nowshera. All of them have lost their jobs after the floods. I have contacted my contractor and he has told me that it would take at least six moths to start mining work in the mountains" he says... International Labour Organisation (ILO) has estimated that more than 5.3 million jobs may have lost or affected as a result of mega floods hit Pakistan.

The existing tax system protects exploitative elements having monopoly over economic resources. The poor are paying an exorbitant sales tax of 17pc to 23pc (in fact 40pc on finished imported goods after customs duty, special federal excise duty, sales tax after mandatory value addition and income tax at source) on essential commodities. But the mighty sections of society such as absentee landlords, big industrialists, generals and bureaucrats are paying no wealth tax/income tax on their colossal assets/incomes. It is tragic that in a country where the rich make billions on a daily basis, tax-to-GDP ratio is pathetically low at 9.8pc... There is an urgent need to tax wealth and income of the rich and mighty. Rent of agriculture land derived by absentee landlord should be taxed so heavily that they are forced to give up ownership -- these lands should be with the tillers who produce agriculture produces. The corporate rate should be brought down to 20pc to promote industrialisation, but any director or other office holder (having more than 20pc shares) drawing annual salary exceeding Rs5 million should be taxed at the rate of 50pc... The government should launch programmes, financed mainly through taxes, to solve the twin problems of unemployment and poverty. These welfare-oriented schemes may also include subsidised/free medical and educational facilities, low-cost housing, and drinking water facilities in rural areas (especially flood-ravaged ones), land improvement schemes, and employment guarantee programmes. Once people see tangible benefits of the taxes paid, there will be better response to tax compliance. Taxes cannot be collected through harsh measures and irrational policies. It is high time politicians, judges, civil-military high-ups and public office holders made public their tax declarations.

On November 25, 2008, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved the $7.6 billion standby arrangement for Pakistan to be delivered over 23-month, which was later enhanced to $11.3 billion in July 2009. One of the demands of the lender was introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT) from July 1, 2010. It was deferred to October 1, 2010 and now IMF has suspended release of the last tranche unless it is implemented as FBR failed to introduce RGST after lapse of the deadline fixed by the government in the budget speech of Finance Minister... There is no political will to tax the rich and mighty. They have not pointed this out in their recommendations (sic). Instead of more taxes we need reduction in excessive marginal tax rates making them compatible with other tax jurisdictions of the world, especially Asia. Elimination of GST on production, machinery and equipment is the need of the hour to promote industrialisation, but they have advised otherwise. The current external debt of Pakistan stands at $ 55 billion. That figure will jump to $73 billion in 2015-16, as debts that were rescheduled after 9/11, in exchange for Pakistan's co-operation in the war on terror, will come back into action. Besides this, Pakistan is paying over $ 3 billion on debt servicing every year on average. As for the FY 2010, this amount is $ 5. 640 billion, which Pakistan will be paying to its creditors amid 20 million people crying for most urgent basic needs; food, clothes, shelter, health and education... Pakistan's debt repayments already amount to three times what the government spends on healthcare -- in a country where 38 percent of under 5-year-olds are underweight, only 54 percent of people are literate, and 60 percent live below the poverty line... Thus, under the present circumstances, it is almost impossible for the government of Pakistan to meet basic requirements of its millions of displaced people as the international response to Pakistan is far less than the Tsunami and Haiti disasters -- the world community has only provided $229 million to Pakistan so far. This translates into $16.16 for each affected Pakistani person as compared to $1,087 every affected person in Haiti and $1,249 per affected person in the Indian Ocean tsunami.

All these three parties are not only coalition partners in the Sindh provincial government but are also partners in the federal government. The coalition governments have been marred by mutual distrust and an increasing observable unease, sometimes volatile, when it comes to the identification of those accused of murders and arson as well as the dispersal of government jobs. The leaders of triangular political forces of Karachi -- PPP, ANP and the MQM -- on a number of occasions went an extra mile to keep tensions in check, but the provincial leaders and workers of the coalition partners are far from any conciliation mood. The third emerging ethnic force in Karachi, the NAP was able to extract two provincial assembly seats in Karachi, much to the dismay of the MQM, on the basis of growing Pashtun population in the city. The Guardian, while reporting Imran Farooq's murder, pointed towards the MQM's "longstanding rivalries with ethnic Pashtun and Sindhi parties in Karachi," and added that "the MQM has also been riven by occasional internecine violence".

The deposit holders get negligible returns on their savings, while the banks are earning mark-up between 12 to 18 percent from borrowers -- this is the worst kind of exploitation one can think of. Even the governments -- federal and provincials -- borrow funds at exorbitant rate of nearly 14 percent from private banks. Nowhere in the world such a wide spread of earning is available to banks -- adding insult to injury they call it profit and loss sharing. One wonders what the regulator, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), is doing... The State Bank of Pakistan, during a suo motu case before the apex court has admitted that financial institutions wrote off Rs256 billion loans from 1971 to 2009. During the self-acclaimed transparent era of Musharraf-Shaukat, loan write-offs in just seven years (2000-2006) crossed the figure of Rs125 billion, whereas in the much-publicised corrupt eras of elected governments (1985-1999) it was just Rs30 billion. This comparison speaks for itself and does not require any further comments... The new owners made billions as banks were sold at discounted prices and money realised from so-called privatisation was not used for external debt retirement but for the benefits of rulers. In the entire process, the country lost billions of rupees. The nation also suffered revenue losses of Rs120 billion as bad debts written off by the banks under the SBP's amnesty scheme enjoyed tax exemption. In 1990, the Auditor General of Pakistan issued a detailed audit report questioning the authority of Board of Revenue to issue administrative instructions for allowing bad debts. It is quite understandable how the Board of Revenue and SBP, in the presence of this audit report issued further concessions to the borrowers and banks.

The small pack of chocolate on sale cost Rs20 and the bigger one Rs30. Hazrat Bilal said he and his father bought the smaller pack from the IDPs for Rs11 or 12 and made profit of eight to nine rupees on each pack. It was strange to find out that the foreign donors had sent chocolates instead of something useful for the IDPs, who thought they couldn't afford the luxury and would be better-off selling it to make some money and use it to buy items of essential use. Another interesting observation was that Hazrat Bilal and most other sellers of relief goods were Afghan refugees. They were buying these goods from Pakistani IDPs and then selling to needy Pakistanis. Having been involved in the business of selling and buying relief goods for years, the Afghan refugees are able to do a better job in earning their livelihood in this manner. This was evident from the initially poor response to the UN Appeal for emergency international assistance for the IDPs. The UN appealed for $ 543 million to cover the cost of looking after the needs of 1.5 million IDPs for the six-month period ending December 2009. Until the end of May, it had received $ 88 million only constituting 16 per cent of the appeal. Though the response to the appeal for donations improved subsequently, the needs too kept rising with the displacement of more people and extension of the zone of conflict to new fronts in tribal areas such as South Waziristan, Orakzai and Kurram.

The economy, according to the IMF, was picking up before the floods hit the country. The real GDP grew by 4.1 percent, the current account deficit narrowed to $3.5 billion (2 per cent of GDP) and both exports ($19.63 billion) and remittances ($8.90 billion) went up during the last financial year (FY10). However, the budget deficit surpassed the 5.1 percent revised target to reach 6.3 per cent of GDP... On the basis of data provided by the Pakistan government, the IMF has predicted that during the current fiscal year, real GDP growth will come down to 2.8 percent ($190.20 billion) from the pre-floods estimates of 4.3 percent ($190.66 billion); the current account deficit will increase to 3.1 percent ($5.86 billion), 0.6 percentage points higher than the pre floods estimates of 2.5 percent ($4.62 billion); inflation will rise to 13.5 percent from 11.7 percent estimates before the deluge; exports and imports will grew by 3 percent and 8.7 percent respectively compared with earlier estimates of 4.7 and 6.9 percent resulting into trade deficit of $13.52 billion... The devastation wrought by the floods is so enormous that the Pakistan government cannot cope with it on its own and thus direly needs foreign assistance. According to Economic Affairs Division, as of September 24, 2010 total multilateral and bilateral pledges worth $1.46 billion have been made of which $411.28 million are in the form of grant and $709 million in kind. However, only $53.38 million grant has been disbursed, while relief goods worth $285 million have been received. In addition, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank will provide $1 billion and $500 million respectively in credit. The IMF's $451 million loan has already been mentioned... Floods have undone the economic recovery -- fragile though it was -- that began in the last financial year. The economic slowdown will result in loss of jobs and incomes as well as revenue. The level of domestic savings (10.1 per cent of GDP) and investment (16.6 per cent), which is already quite low, will further come down and reduce future growth prospects...

One of the planks of neo-liberal policies has been cutting public subsidies across the length and breadth of the economy, both to producers and consumers. While there is no disagreement that direct or indirect subsidies from government accruing to the rich and powerful represent a major social injustice, the facts bear witness that it has been the poor and defenseless who have primarily been at the receiving end of the anti-subsidy crusade. If there is any doubt about this we need only to cast our thoughts to our electricity bills which have doubled in recent months. And if the readers of newspapers such as this one are feeling the pinch, then one can imagine how a family of six earning Rs10,000 a month is coping with an electricity bill of Rs2000 (and often more)... Of course, a genuine programme of structural reform is exactly what is missing in most of these reports. The SBP report repeatedly notes the importance of broadening the tax net, but continues to eulogise the general services tax (GST) as the panacea to our problems. There is no mention of reviving the wealth tax, for example, which was of course abolished under the Shaukat Aziz regime even while liquid earnings of the rich and powerful were increasing exponentially. There is no mention of properly accounting for and then taxing the earnings of military-run enterprises (whether mills, colleges, real estate, etc. etc.). These are the big fish that need to be giving up a significant chunk of their incomes, while GST is simply pushed onto the consumer in the form of higher prices...

Fiscal deficit surpassed the 4.9 percent target to reach 6.3 percent of GDP despite drastic cuts in development spending as the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) was slashed from Rs646 billion budgetary allocation to Rs490 billion. Current expenditure surpassed the Rs2.26 trillion revised target to reach Rs2.40 trillion. Revenue receipts increased from Rs1.67 trillion to Rs2.05 trillion. However, as a percentage of GDP revenue fell to 14.2 percent from 14.5 percent a year earlier. Tax-GDP ratio also fell to 10 percent from 10.3 percent.

SBP has aptly mentioned that subsidies and losses of public sector enterprises increased by 10 percent compared to the previous fiscal year and "to put this in perspective, in Fiscal year 2009-10 these expenditures, as a percentage of GDP, were almost equal to the combined total budget for health and education". According to SBP, this was by no means "an acceptable situation"... It also added that recent 50 per cent hike in government sector salaries, anticipated rise in energy tariffs and removal of GST exemptions to broaden the tax base are also likely to exacerbate the already sky-rocketing prices. The SBP asserted that losses to agriculture, livestock and other sectors have limited prospects of GDP growth for FY11 to the range of "2 to 3 percent"... If the $98 billion in development assistance provided to Pakistan from 1960 to 2009 had been invested during this time to yield a moderate real return of 8 percent, it would have grown into assets equal to $619 billion in 2008, many times Pakistan’s current external debt. Instead, this debt now stands at over 70 percent of GDP, and is in and of itself a constraint on growth.

This is alarming. Some 1,233 persons have been killed in Karachi during the last 10 months. This was disclosed in a talk show by a private TV channel on October 21, 2010. To assure citizens about the government’s seriousness in putting an end to the killings, the interior minister lands in Karachi... he federal board of revenue collects some 53 percent of revenues from Karachi. About 30 percent of Pakistan’s manufacturing sector is located here and it generates some 20 percent of Pakistan’s GDP. This hub of commerce and industry now remains paralysed for many days every year... If we have a look at Karachi’s population, at 4-6 million Pashtuns constitute some 25 percent of the city’s population and around 15 percent population of the entire Sindh whereas Urdu-speaking mohajirs or MQM number around 7-9 million and thus account for some 45 percent of the residents of the metropolis and around 23 percent of the entire Sindh. Out of 168 seats in the Sindh Assembly, ANP has only 2, MQM 50, NPP 3, PML-F 8, PML-Q 11 and PPP 93.