ENTREPRENEURSHIP & PAKISTAN:GENDER DEVELOPMENT STATUS WOMAN AS AN ENTREPRENEUR IN PAKISTAN

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Entrepreneurship MGT602

Lesson 45

ENTREPRENEURSHIP & PAKISTAN

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

To look at the history of entrepreneurship in Pakistan

To understand the nature of policies in industrialization.

To understand the profile of a typical entrepreneur in Pakistan.

To learn the purpose of new policies induction.

To identify different fields of entrepreneurship...

To understand the value of Pakistani entrepreneur in the region.

To illustrate some of the fundamental issues related to woman entrepreneurs...

To understand development made in woman entrepreneurship.

To look at the over all scenario of entrepreneurship in Pakistan.

10.

Future of entrepreneurship in Pakistan.

ENTREPRENEURS IN PAKISTAN

Salient Features of Entrepreneurs in Pakistan are:

Age Pattern

"The mean age of entrepreneur was found to be 42 years and of their enterprises 12 years. It is comparable

to the Korean age pattern (46)".

Corporate status

Sole owner: He works with his own hands combines the entrepreneur function of initiating the business

making investments, taking decisions and performing managerial functions".

Heritage: "Caste played an important role in certain industries and on the other hand heritage is dominant.

But overall it is much diversified."

Educational Level

"Differing from industry to industry 60% have school education and 30% have college or better education

only 10% have professional or graduation level".

Skills Level

Majority is skilled in family business Most of training is as a family member. Technically they are very

skilled in heredity business. New generation has professional education

Sizes and Investment

"Majority started in a small way with less than 10 workers and 1/2 to 2/3 of the firms started with less than

50,000 investments"

Growth

"The growth was fast in case of small firms than in large firms".

Profitability

"Rate of profit is higher in case of small industries in comparison with the large industries."

The Industrial History of Pakistan

Pakistan's industrial history has been dominated by a single-minded emphasis on industry and that is of

large-scale enterprises.

The fall out of that development strategy was formally adopted in the 60's as conscious policy step in the

start of second policy plan period (1960-1965) has been large scale industrial holdings, accounting for

much of the country's assets and capital. The feeling among the masses is that a few families control 70 to

80 percent of the country's assets, led to political rebellion. That rebellion also culminated in the

dismemberment of the eastern part of the country. The primary causes for that tragedy, were basically

economic in nature.

The upheaval also generated a parallel economic thought, exclusive to the peculiarities of Pakistan's

economy. That economic thought advocated across the board nationalization of economic assets as a

vehicle for ensuring social justice in the society.

The fall out of that strategy was two pronged:

Inefficient labor

Shaken Business Confidence

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Entrepreneurship MGT602

The reaction to that policy mix in the early 1980's was revert back to the Ayubian model of economic

development.

The model was characterized by:

Promotion of large-scale units

Expansion of large-scale enterprises

Banking sector turned to cater to large loans

The IMF conditions and poor recovery rate of huge borrowings played a major role in creating a negative

point for the progress curve. These constraints further pushed the economy towards recession, industry

towards sickness and individual units towards default. All these factors precipitated the rethinking of a

strategy to revive the growth of economy.

It was due to non involvement of banks that medium scale and small-scale enterprises has got the attention

of the stakeholders i.e. the economic managers and the private sector. The development of SMEs suits the

current situation on account of the following factors.

Low overhead cost, low level of financing

Lesser pressure on the banking system

Employment generation

Entrepreneurial development

Vendor based development

Development of large-scale industry on firm basis

A more just distribution of resources and profits

The pre-requisites for the development of SME sector rest heavily on an infrastructure tuned to support

such developments that include:

A banking system customized for SME development

One window operation

Currently, our banking system continues to be the large sector banker. Despite talk of SME development

under the auspices of SMEDA and development of SME Bank and Khushali Bank, the financial sector's

general response has been influenced by the security issue, i.e. against which asset the bank would be

advancing loans to the small and medium scale business entity. In the absence of a customized banking

setup, the development in the SME sector so far has been evolutionary and not the result of any conscious

activities.

The growth of Pakistani entrepreneurship in good in region and can be compared with INDIA, Sri Links

and Malaysia I respect of following

Rising stars%

Lost opportunity%

Pakistan

60.4

Sri Lanka

57.1

38.7

India

52.3

29.3

Malaysia

59.6

27.7

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Entrepreneurship MGT602

GENDER DEVELOPMENT STATUS WOMAN AS AN ENTREPRENEUR IN PAKISTAN

Each of the two genders of any society constitutes roughly half of the population, and Pakistan is no

exception. People of both genders embody not only labor force, but also knowledge and creativity, which

may be mobilized, to achieve economic ends. Discarding either of the genders, therefore, implies foregoing

the potential benefits, which arise from mobilizing the respective human resources for development.

Pakistani women have been engaged in the production process for ages. Their participation in the

economic activities in the modern society has also progressed beyond agriculture into the local market

economy. Women are increasingly migrating to urban areas for employment in a range of cottage

industries, such as carpet weaving, textiles and handicrafts. In search for wage employment, women are

moving into small business and self-employment ventures thereby creating many formal and informal

opportunities for work.

Women entrepreneurship in the formalized sense, however, remains a new concept. Our current strategies

also tend to focus on increasing women's participation in the labor force. The business environment for

women in Pakistan reflects a complex interplay of many factors made up of social, cultural, traditional and

religious elements. These have taken shape over many centuries; are anchored in patriarchal system and are

clearly manifested in the lower of women. The form of constitutional structures, policy documents,

regulatory arrangements and institutional mechanisms is contemporary rather than traditional, so it is

cosmetically impartial.

Yet the gender bias is rigid and deep-rooted as it draws legitimacy from the perpetuation of a traditional

mind-set, established rituals and a firm belief system. It has conclusively been shown that women business

owners encounter more obstacles, and face more risks, financially, socially, economically, culturally and

legally than male business owners face.

The Government of Pakistan is well aware of the potential of the women in our society and the

contribution they can make towards economic development. Women are continuously being encouraged to

enter the business stream of the country and are being provided incentives. However, there still is a strong

dearth of focused initiatives that need to be taken by existing business facilitation institutions.

The new scenario is giving rise to woman as entrepreneur as they have opened their own chamber of

commerce. The woman bank is in Place and we can see lot of women coming up in-services sector,

apparel, education and many such occupation.

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