Rural finance for growth and poverty alleviation

Pakistan's rural sector accounts for more than 70 percent of employment, and roughly two-thirds of rural employment is in agriculture. Less than a third of rural households get loans, only 10 percent of which are from institutional sources. Pakistan's credit institutions are not helping the country accelerate agricultural growth and reduce poverty. To improve performance in the rural economy and efficiency in financial institutions, rural credit markets must be liberalized. The government needs to initiate the following reforms: 1) produce and price controls must be replaced by prudent regulation and supervision, combined with policies to stabilize the economy; 2) commercial banks must operate in a competitive environment. They must be allowed to set interest rates for rural lending that cover their transaction costs; 3) credit must be available to support productivity growth for agricultural smallholders and small producers of the rural nonformal sector, where Pakistan's growth potential lies; and 4) credit must be available to women and to the rural poor for consumption-smoothing and for sustainable income-generating activities. Policy should be directed at developing a market-based financial system for rural finance, but because of market failures to support disadvantaged groups, a special-priority program may be needed to get credit to women, smallholders and the rural nonformal sector. Subsidizing interest rates is not the way to help marginal borrowers. Instead, they can be helped through fixed-cost subsidies and self-selected targeting. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) should be encouraged to help. Commercial should be encouraged to lend on other bases than the mortgage and passbook system. They could experiment with wholesaling credit through input suppliers, marketing agents and NGOs. They should consider lending for such downstream agricultural activities as agroprocessing. The biggest challenge facing rural finance is the restructuring of cooperatives. The next important step for the Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan would be a portfolio audit - the results of which will determine next steps, such as major restructuring of its portfolio and changing its ownership. To improve rural financing, the system of property rights, title and default enforcement must also be strengthened, among other reforms.Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research

WiFi network for long distances applications

The needs for bridging of digital divide in the rural communities and the economics of currently available broadband access technologies have motivated us for innovation and deployment of the new system designs and applications. The widely available and flexible WiFi technique meets the cost and suitability targets for the rural broadband applications. To cope with the special requirements of rural communication. amendments of 802.11 standards at the MAC protocol level has been introduced. These amendments are important due to the shortcomings of WiFi over long distances under the power constraints. This chapter proposes a new 802.11 point-to-multipoint (PMP) technique based on TDD/TDMA technique by using one of the access points in the system as centralized/gateway point to the other APs. The discussion includes the TDMA design and, architecture on top of the conventional 802.11 MAC. The protocol convergence at the gateway between the access network and the backhaul is also presented. The simulation results present the performance analysis and validate the efficiency of the proposed schem

Interference in femtocell network

Femtocell network is a new technology that uses the advantage of an Internet backbone to enhance the cellular coverage in residential or small business areas. However, due to the expected random deployment of the femtocell access point (FAPs), there is a strong probability of interference among the femtocell nodes and between the femtocells and the macrocell nodes. In this chapter, an interference enhancement for multi-femtocells is developed and designed for two tiers macro-femtocell networks. An adaptive power control is calculated based on selecting the minimum interference channel with the optimized channel gain. In the simulation a number of the FAPs, the distance between the macrocell and the femtocell and the path loss between the macrocell node and the FAPs are used as design parameters. The results show a performance enhancement in the interference degradation rati

Psychological Distress and Health Related Quality of Life between Smokers and Non-Smokers

The present research was conducted to explore the relationship between psychological distress and health related quality of life among direct smokers and second hand smokers. It was a correlation study in which cross-sectional research design was used. The total sample size was 200 which consist of hundred direct smokers and hundred second hand smokers. It was hypothesized that there is significant relationship between psychological distress and health related quality of life among direct smokers and secondhand smokers. It was also hypothesized that there is significant difference on psychological distress and health related quality of life between direct smokers and second hand smokers. Statistical Package of Social Sciences Version 20 (SPSS-20) was used to check these hypotheses. Results showed that there is significant negative relation between psychological distress and health related quality of life. Further, the results showed that there is significant difference on psychological distress between direct smokers and second hand smokers. This analysis further revealed that direct smokers have more psychological distress as compared to second hand smokers. In this study only one gender is taken as sample so in future researches both gender should be taken as sample. Key words; Psychological distress, Health related quality of life, Smoker

EFFECT OF MICRO FINANCE ON POVERTY REDUCTION OF SMALL SCALE FARMERS OF PAKISTAN

This study revealed the impact of micro finance with regard to poverty alleviation, employment generation opportunities, upraise in the standards of living of the small farmers of Pakistan along with the access of such finances and their financial cost. Small farmers often rely on the loans and finance from the formal and informal sources of finance. There is low rate of sustainability in the micro finance sector. These schemes remain for a small time period. Another challenge is that there is a need of replicable and scalable model. There is also a requirement of formalization of informal credit source which count for higher. There is high need of reducing the ambiguities in obtaining the credit from these sources. With respect to agriculture, the proportion of finance should be increase with the proportion to its contribution to the economy. The data for this study has been collected through a selfstructured questionnaire and respondents are small farmers who are availing the micro finance facility for any source; informal, formal or semi – informal. The data collected form 150 respondent from Sahiwal and Multan Region. The data has been analyzed through regression and correlation method with the use of SPSS for checking the relationship and impact of micro finance on the living of poor and employment generation. This paper also concluded that the financial cost of such finances is having significant role on the success of such schemes. The research is a contribution to the financial sector to set their focus according to the quality and quantity of micro credit to the agriculture sector

1-(4-Chloro­phen­yl)-3-(2-thienylcarbon­yl)thio­urea

The title compound, C12H9ClN2OS2, exists in the thio­amide form with an intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond across the thio­urea and the carbonyl group. The dihedral angle between the rings is 10.36 (11)°. In the crystal structure, mol­ecules are linked into chains by weak inter­molecular C—H⋯Cl hydrogen-bonding inter­actions

N-(4-Bromo­phen­yl)-3,5-dinitro­benzamide

The title mol­ecule, C13H8BrN3O5, is slightly twisted, with the dihedral angle between the two benzene rings being 5.9 (1)°. In the crystal, N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds link the mol­ecules into one-dimensional chains running along [101]. Further stabilization of the crystal structure is provided by π–π inter­actions [shortest centroid–centroid distance = 3.6467 (17) Å]

1-(4,6-Dimethyl­pyrimidin-2-yl)thio­urea

In the crystal structure of the title compound, C7H10N4S, weak inter­molecular N—H⋯S inter­actions form a two-dimensional network parallel to the ab plane. An intra­molecular N—H⋯N hydrogen bond occurs

Factors Influencing Job Satisfaction of Employees in Telecom Sector of Pakistan

The telecom industry plays an important role in the underpinning of a country’s economy. This study is aimed at getting a clearer view of the level of satisfaction of the employees in various telecom companies. The main concerns are the relative importance and need of different job satisfaction factors and how they contribute to the overall satisfaction of the employees. Another field of focus is the impact of different things, such as experience, age and sex on job satisfaction. The results deduced represent employee relations, salary, fringe supervision, and efficiency as the most important factors influencing job satisfaction. It was seen that job satisfaction was good in telecommunication companies This paper was utilized in understanding the importance of the environment in which the employees work, pay, fairness, promotion, job security, supervisors, and co-worker relationships and their effect on job satisfaction. All telecom companies Ufone, Zong, Telenor, Warid telecom, Pakistan Telecommunication and Mobilink were visited to collected data. Data was quantitatively collected through close-ended questionnaires with a sample size of 200 telecom sector employees. Data was analyzed through correlation and multiple regression using SPSS software and results were significant. The overall job satisfaction of the employees in the telecom sector is at the positive level. Hence, this research was mainly undertaken to investigate on the significance of factors such as working conditions, pay and promotion, job security, fairness, relationship with co-workers and supervisors in affecting the job satisfaction. This paper presents a comprehensive diagnosis of job satisfaction indices of telecom sector, the factors causing the dissatisfaction & suggestions to improve them. Keywords: Job Satisfaction, Job Dissatisfaction, employees, telecom sector, Pakistan