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My un replied email of 14 October, 2012

Subject: Mr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh Sahib Kindly Provide the Information About IMF Loan & Etisalat Overdue Payment

1. Pakistan is repaying $7.6 billion to the IMF. Did we receive exactly this much amount or the total sum was less than this figure?

2. How much amount of interest Pakistan will be paying over the principle sum of this loan of $7.6 billion from the IMF? Or the IMF will be charging interest on the whole sanctioned amount of $11.3billion?

3. Did Pakistan pay and what was the total bill for the traveling, boarding and lodging of IMF delegations’s recent visit to UAE, for discussions with our economic team?

4. Besides the interest, how much service, handlers commission and or other charges were deducted by the IMF, on its loan of $7.6 billion to Pakistan? V V important question.

5. How much service charges or penalty was charged by the IMF to Pakistan, for not utilizing or obtaining the remaining $3.7 billion amount, from the originally sanctioned loan amount of $11.3 billion; because Pakistan got only $7.6 billion from IMF?

6. When will Pakistan get its overdue payment of $800 million from the Etisalat Telecom, which is controlling the whole PTCL management and other affairs, with a minority share holding?

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad
Sent from my iPad3 4G LTE

An open letter to the PM Pakistan

Mr. Prime Minister Please Don’t Allow to Open the Corruption Flood Gate

SALARY
[Section 149]
The responsibility for withholding tax from salary has now been extended to any “person
responsible for” paying salary. Previously, it was only the “employer” who was
responsible for the withholding.

It is now proposed not to consider the following, whilst determining tax to be withheld
from salary payments:
a) Charitable donations;
b) Tax credit for investment in shares and insurance;
c) Contribution to an “Approved Pension Fund”; and
d) Profit paid on loan utilized for construction of a new house or acquisition of a house.

As a result, the salaried individuals will claim the above tax credits in their returns, which
may result in refund.

H’able Mian Nawaz Sharif Sahab

Salaam.

Above is the extract of relevant section on income tax proposing change in the method of availing tax rebate on investments by salaried class of tax payers.

This may look very innocent apparently, but is a clear cut reminder that the bureaucracy has tricked the PMLN government in opening a big flood gate of corruption. Who does not know in Pakistan that receiving legitimate claim from FBR require payment of at least 40% to its functionaries. With this amendment, all law abiding tax payers will be put on the mercy of FBR for claiming rebate on investment. Knowing how FBR functions, this rebate will take years, not months, to realize. And that too after paying at least 40% of rebate amount as bribe to FBR.

By allowing this change, Mr. Ishaq Dar will be remembered (although he is not in the knowledge of this trick, which was confirmed with his statement today on 17 June, 2013, in Geo TV program “Capital Talk” of Hamid Mir, when he said at 8.35 PM that people can deduct allowed rebate from the taxable amount at the time of submitting yearly I.T returns), as one, who has provided superb and golden opportunity to FBR officials for grabbing money from salaried class of income tax payers.

There is still time for PMLN to protect its image and restore the true self-assessment scheme in letter and spirit for salaried class of income tax payers. FBR can always scrutinize any suspicious returns, if they want to catch cheaters. Why penalize a huge lot of good people for the fault of few bad people. FBR should set its own house in order first and catch non-filers, instead of harassing honest tax payers.

They can design many methods to confirm legitimacy of investment but the goal should be to minimize contact between FBR officials and honest tax payers.

Justice delayed is justice denied. If tax payer cannot take rebate of investment when investment is made (same year), then it is no rebate. It is then much better to announce withdrawal of all rebates on income tax. Period.

Syed Nayyar Uddin Ahmad
Lahore.

Sent from my iPad3 4G LTE

Karzai boycotts US-backed talks with Taliban because of Pakistani hand. A TOI news.

(In my opinion, India is pulling the strings of Karazi, because Pakistan’s help in bringing the USA and Taliban on negotiations table, has helped the US and Pakistan come closer with each other, which is hurting India very badly. Well done Pakistan, keep up your good work).

WASHINGTON: The wheels are coming off the US-initiated “peace” talks with Taliban even before it has begun. A furious Afghan President Hamid Karzai suspended negotiation with Washington on Wednesday over a bilateral security agreement, angered by the perceived betrayal of Kabul by the Americans, who in turn appeared to have been suckered by Taliban. The terrorist group, given political stamp of approval by the Obama administration on Tuesday, killed four US soldiers in an attack hours after the talks agreement, despite expectations in Washington that it would abjure violence.

A statement from Karzai’s office in Kabul spoke of the “messages of a continuation of war and bloodshed” contained the Taliban statement issued at the opening of a new political office in Doha, Qatar, where US-sponsored talks were to take place between Afghan representatives, US interlocutors, and Taliban. But Karzai said the Afghan government no longer plans to send envoys to the talks over the Taliban’s statement, but remains willing to consider joining those talks should they be moved from Doha to Kabul.

“The opening of Taliban office in Qatar, the way it was opened and messages it contained, contradicts the guarantees given by the US to Afghanistan,” the statement said after a meeting at President Hamid Karzai’s palace.

Karzai’s ire was provoked in particular by Taliban arrogating for itself representation for all of Afghanistan by presenting itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which was the official name of the Taliban-led government when it ruled from Kabul before it was routed after 9/11. Karzai’s government heads the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Kabul was also enraged by the Taliban’s use of its flag at the opening of the Doha office.

“The president is not happy with the name of the office. We oppose the title the ‘Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’ because such a thing doesn’t exist,” Aimal Faizi, a Karzai spokesman, told a news agency. “The US was aware of the president’s stance.” In Washington, US officials were said to have been surprised by the Taliban’s show of its insignias and its statement.

They needn’t have. The Taliban statement referred to the jihad it was waging against occupiers as lawful, and in effect pledged to continue fighting to evict them, while making no reference to cutting ties with Al Qaeda, respecting the Afghan constitution, or guaranteeing rights of women and minorities, all conditions the U.S had initially demanded but later abandoned.

Karzai saw a sell-out to Pakistan and its proxies in the US backing down on the conditions, although he did not directly name the country that polls show most Afghans despising. “The latest developments show that foreign hands are behind the Taliban’s Qatar office and, unless they are purely Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in talks,” his statement said in an indirect reference to Pakistan.

The US needs Pakistan’s help to exit from land-locked Afghanistan, and evidently Pakistan is extracting a price for this by projecting its Taliban proxies into Kabul via recognition in Doha as a virtual government in exile, virtually forcing U.S to dump the Karzai dispensation in the process. “There is a contradiction between what the US government says and what it does regarding Afghanistan peace talks,” a Karzai aide said.

While Washington projected the proposed Doha talks as a breakthrough and began preparing to send officials for the first round of talks later this week, Taliban responded in its usual style, attacking the American base outside Kabul, killing four soldiers in a rocket attack, and bragging about it, suggested nothing had changed in its outlook.

“The mujahideen of the Islamic emirate from the other side also have taken all the preparations that will be effective for the destruction of America’s nests,” said a Taliban statement, elaborating on the Doha statement which indicating it will continue to fight the US.

Believe is to follow a credo; have a faith; be a believer.

“Visualize this thing you want. See it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin.”

Robert Collier (1885-1950);
Author

3 Ways to Get a Promotion

If you’ve been at your company for a few years and hope to move up to the next level, here are three things you can do to increase your chances:

Take initiative. Producing results in your job is just table stakes. Go beyond the confines of your current role and find ways to improve your group’s performance. Take on problems that no one else is solving.

Choose your battles wisely. Display a sense of professional maturity by choosing battles that can be won. Not every inefficiency is worth tackling. Only take on problems that increase customer satisfaction, revenue, or productivity.

Show you can manage people. This can be hard if it’s not one of your official responsibilities. If so, try to showcase your interpersonal and people management skills when working with groups.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “Getting that First Promotion” by John Beeson.

“Agreements, whether to yourself or others, should not be made if they cannot, or will not, be honored. You have the
strength, intelligence, and heart to know what you are willing
and not willing to do.”

— Dr. Gay Hendricks

Has anyone taken oath in Pakistan to protect its integrity and sovereignty or it still remains not even a Banana Republic?

SC agrees to hear PIL on US surveillance of internet data from India

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to give an urgent hearing to a PIL on the issue of US National Security Agency snooping on internet data from India and seeking to initiate action against internet companies for allowing the agency to access the information.

Agreeing to hear the PIL filed by a former dean of law faculty of Delhi University Professor SN Singh, a bench of justices AK Patnaik and Ranjan Gogoi posted the case for hearing next week.

In his plea, Singh has alleged that such largescale spying by the US authorities is detrimental to national security and urged the apex court to intervene in the matter.

He has claimed that the internet companies are sharing information with the foreign authority in “breach” of contract and violation of right to privacy.

“As per reports, nine US-based internet companies, operating in India through agreements signed with Indian users, shared 6.3 billion information/data with National Security Agency of US without express consent of Indian users. Such largescale spying by the USA authorities besides being against the privacy norms is also detrimental to national security,” the petition, filed through advocate Virag Gupta, has said.

Singh has submitted that it is a breach of national security as government’s official communications have come under US surveillance as services of private internet firms are being used by them.

He has sought directions to the Centre to “take urgent steps to safeguard the government’s sensitive internet communications” which are being kept outside India in US servers and are “unlawfully intruded upon by US Intelligence Agencies through US-based Internet companies under secret surveillance program called PRISM”.

In his petition, Singh has also sought directions restraining the government and its officials from using US-based internet companies for official communication and that all such companies, which are doing business in India, must establish their servers here so that they can be regulated as per Indian laws.

“Sovereignty of nation is at stake because no penal action is being taken by the respondent (Centre) against the culprit internet companies,” he has said in his petition.

He has also referred to a report by James R Clapper, director of National Intelligence of USA, who had confirmed surveillance and acquisition of intelligence information of non-US citizens located outside the US as per the provisions of section 702 of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act(FISA).

The Centre had earlier on June 11 expressed surprise and concern over the snooping and said it will seek information and details from the US over reports that India was the fifth most tracked country by the American intelligence which used a secret data-mining programme to monitor worldwide internet data.

The One-Minute Trick to Negotiating Like a Boss

by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Life is full of negotiations, big and small. We negotiate for raises, we negotiate with clients and providers over prices, and we negotiate for more staff, the best projects, and flex time. (Then we go home and negotiate with our kids about how old you have to be to get your own smartphone.)

To be successful, you really need to know how to negotiate well. But the truth is, this particular skill doesn’t come naturally to many people. This is because a negotiation is an experience that is rife with conflicting motivations. When you haggle with another party over price, you need to somehow reconcile your desire to pay (or be paid) your target amount with your fear that if you push too hard, the negotiation may break down. You might end up empty-handed, humiliated, or out of a job. Negotiations are always gambles, and there is always risk.

Who Keeps Their Eyes on The Prize?
One quality that great negotiators possess is the ability to stay focused on their ideal target, despite the risks they are facing. As research conducted by Columbia’s Adam Galinsky and his collegues shows, those most able to do it have what’s called a promotion focus.

Promotion-focused people think about their goals as opportunities to gain — to advance or achieve, to end up better off than they are now. Whenever we think about our goals in terms of potential gains, we automatically (often without realizing it) become more comfortable with risk and less sensitive to concerns about what could go wrong. Prevention-focused people, on the other hand, think about their goals in terms of what they could lose if they don’t succeed — they want to stay safe and keep things running smoothly. Consequently, when we are prevention-focused, we become much more conservative and risk-averse.

As Tory Higgins and I describe in Focus and in our recent HBR article, these different ways of looking at the same goal impact everything about us — our strengths and weaknesses, the strategies we use, and what motivates us. When the goal in question is to pay the lowest price or to get the biggest raise, our focus has profound effects on the way we negotiate.

In one of Galinsky’s studies, MBA students performed the role of a job recruiter, whose goal was to hire a desired candidate (played by another MBA student) while paying the lowest possible signing bonus. Before beginning the negotiation, the recruiters completed an assessment of their dominant focus. (Want to try it? You can here.) The researchers found that the more promotion-focused a recruiter was, the less money they ended up doling out in the final agreement. Promotion focus and money paid were correlated an impressive -0.40.

Why were they so successful? Galinsky found that more promotion-focused a recruiter was, the more likely they were to report having kept their target price in mind throughout the negotiation. A prevention focus, on the other hand, leads to too much worrying about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving the recruiter more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.

The Bold Opener
A second essential in negotiation is a strong opening bid, since that bid is the jumping off point as well as the frame of reference for the negotiation that follows. You are never going to end up paying less than your initial offer when purchasing a car or making a bigger salary than you asked for when starting your new job. But a strong opening bid takes a certain amount of confidence — and promotion focus helps us achieve this.

In a second study, Galinksy and his colleagues divided 54 MBA students into pairs and asked them to take part in a mock negotiation involving the sale of a pharmaceutical plant. Both the “seller” and “buyer” were given detailed information about the circumstances of the sale, including the fact that the “bargaining zone” would range from $17-25 million dollars.

The researchers then manipulated the focus of the buyers to be either promotion or prevention (I’ll explain how you do that later). The negotiation then began with an opening bid from the buyer. Promotion-focused buyers opened with a bid an average of nearly $4 million dollars less than prevention-focused buyers. They were willing to take the greater risk and bid aggressively low, which ultimately paid off in a big way. In the end, promotion buyers purchased the plant for an average of $21.24 million, while prevention buyers paid $24.07 million.

This is one of those things that is worth taking a moment to think about — two negotiators, each armed with identical information, facing similar opponents, and yet one overpays by nearly $4 million dollars. The only difference was that one negotiator was thinking about all that he could gain, while the other focused too much on what he had to lose.

Making The Pie Bigger For Everyone
Promotion focus helps you get a bigger piece of the pie than your opponent. But of course, not every negotiation has to have a winner and a loser. In multiple issue negotiations, there is the possibility of outcomes that are beneficial to both parties, because each party may not prioritize every issue the same way. By yielding on lower priority issues, both parties can reach compromises that get them what they want most – a solution that, as Galinsky and colleagues put it “expands the pie.”

Who is most likely to find these optimally beneficial solutions? It probably won’t surprise you to learn that when the researchers placed both parties in a multiple issue negotiation in a promotion focus, they reached the maximally efficient outcome 79% of the time (compared to only 65% of the time when they were prevention-focused).

How You Can Become More Promotion-Focused
Even if you are naturally prevention-focused or if you tend to become prevention-focused when faced with the uncertainties of negotiation, you can become promotion-focused when you need to be. All you need to do is take a minute or two to focus only on what you have to gain and what you hope to achieve and banish all thoughts of what you might lose.

For example, to put his buyers in a promotion focus, Galinsky simply asked them the following :
Please take a couple of minutes to think about the aspirations you have in a negotiation. What are the negotiation behaviors and outcomes you hope to achieve during a negotiation? How you could promote these behaviors and outcomes?

It’s really as simple as that. When you are preparing for your next negotiation, take a moment to list everything you hope to accomplish, and all the ways in which you will benefit if you are successful. Re-read this list just before the negotiation begins. And most importantly, shut out any thoughts about what could go wrong — just refuse to give them your attention.

With practice, this focus-training will become easier and eventually more or less automatic. Negotiating can become second nature to you if you think about your goals in the right way.

HEIDI GRANT HALVORSON
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is associate director for the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia University Business School and author of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently and Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing the World to Power Influence and Success. Dr. Halvorson is available for speaking and training. She’s on Twitter @hghalvorson.

When it comes to advancing your career, hard work alone isn’t enough. Today’s competitive marketplace demands a more strategic approach.

HBR.