Pakistan’s first influencer marketing conference on 9th

ISLAMABAD (PR): APR CONNECT, the digital division of PR agency Asiatic Public Relations Network, is set to hold digi connect, Pakistan’s first ever influencer marketing conference, on Saturday (December 09) with Coca-Cola as the title sponsor and CEJ-IBA (Centre for Excellence in Journalism – Institute of Business Administration, Karachi) and Pakistan Advertisers Society (PAS) as event partners. The event will bring together local and international digital and communication experts, industry heads, professionals from PR and digital agencies, influencers, bloggers, and students to share knowledge, new ideas and best practices in digital content creation. Keynote speakers include Elias Markopoulos (Regional Director, Digital + Content at Hill + Knowlton Strategies), Kathryn Casson (Director for Public Affairs and Communications, MENAat Coca-Cola) and Adeel Farhan (Head of Strategic Partnerships at Google).
With an increasing number of brands using social media celebrities and influencers for wider dissemination of their messaging, Pakistan is also experiencing a consistent growth in influencer marketing, which is being globally favored as an integral part of the communication strategy. With huge fan-followings, these influencers are followed and trusted by millions of social media users who are also consumers of these brands. At the same time there is a need to understand the impact of influencer marketing in the local context and how both brands and influencers themselves can gauge outcomes by measuring beyond metrics like ‘the number of likes on a Facebook post’.

ICCI for focusing on savings and investment to spur economic growth

ISLAMABAD (INP) Sheikh Amir Waheed, President ICCI, has called upon the government to focus on promoting savings and investment in order to spur the economic growth of the country as these two instruments played important role in generating resources to provide funds for developmental projects and to get rid of heavy foreign borrowings. He said many countries have accelerated growth of their economies by focusing on savings and investment, but the performance of Pakistan on this account was not up to the mark. He said Pakistan’s saving rate was many times less than that of China and India as savings rates in China was 40 percent of its GDP and in India 38 percent of its GDP while Pakistan’s national saving rate was just over 11 percent of its GDP. He said due to low savings and investment, our country was heavily depending on foreign borrowings to meet the needs of its economic development that brought many problems to the business and industry as well as to the common man.

He urged that government should come up with new incentives to promote national savings and investment that would enable the country to finance developmental projects with indigenous resources and reduce its reliance on foreign debt as well.
Muhammad Naveed, Senior Vice President, and Nisar Mirza, Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that Pakistan has made good laws and policies for foreign investment, but lack of implementation of these laws was major problem in achieving the desired results. They said that the previous governments had provided sovereign guarantees to independent power producers, but these guarantees could not be honored and this situation was not sending good message to foreign investors. They said poor infrastructure, security challenges, political uncertainty and energy shortages were other hurdles for foreign investors and emphasized that the government should address these issues on priority basis to attract more foreign investment in the country.
They emphasized that government should take strong measures to implement the proposals given from time to time by the private sector to improve the economy and ensure timely payment of stuck up sales tax refunds that would restore the confidence of exporters and local investors and help in reviving the business and economic activities in the country.

Sunflower cultivation planned for edible oil extraction

SIALKOT (APP): Punjab government has formulated a comprehensive plan for the promotion of sunflower and other oil seed crops in the province. Under the programme, sunflower would be cultivated on more than two lakh acres of land in different areas of the province. Sources in Agriculture department told APP on Tuesday that the step was being taken to produce maximum edible oil in order to lessen the imports bill. Currently, only 34 percent edible oil is being produced within the country while 66 percent is being imported for domestic needs for which the government was spending huge foreign exchange. The demand of edible oil has been increasing rapidly and sunflower crop could play a vital role as its seeds have 40 percent oil capacity as compared to other oil seed crops, said an expert. Sunflower would be cultivated on 6,000 acres in four tehsils of Sialkot: Sialkot tehsil 250 acres, Daska 2,250 acres, Pasrur 1,500 acres and 2,000 acres in tehsil Sambrial.

More Japanese firms ready to invest in Pakistan: CG

KARACHI (APP): More Japanese companies have shown interest to invest in Pakistan, after profitable and flourishing business operations of eighty three Japanese companies in different sectors in Pakistan and incited by the big improvement in the law and order situation especially in Karachi over last couple of years. This was informed by Consul General of Japan in Karachi, Toshikazu Isomura while speaking at a reception hosted to mark 84th birth day of Japanese Emperor Akihito here. He emphasized on focusing the bilateral trade which was very low at only two billion dollars last year against the big potential on both sides. There were also good opportunities for foreign investment in Pakistan and it had a vast market of 220 million population. "We want to increase trade," he stressed. He mentioned that Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) were playing very important role in strengthening economic relations and promoting trade between the two countries.
JICA started extending its financial and technical assistance since 1954 and JICA's role began in 1980.
He said Japan and Pakistan always enjoyed very good relations since long and efforts were being made on both the sides to give further boost to these as the two countries had proved the best partners on social and economic fronts.
"Japan always supported Pakistan's economy including industries," he remarked.
He said over 10,000 Pakistani were living in Japan and the similar number visited in 2016.