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Bhutanese children at a window. Most young people are literate and computer-savvy and
there is a hunger for the latest products, including casual fashion and electronic goods
that could be sold online. Bhutan is undergoing an important political and economic
transition. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
By Sourajit Aiyer For The Straits Times
WITH a population of about 750,000, Bhutan rarely evokes the interest of
international investors. However, opportunities exist for those willing to look at
specific sectors and focus on potential profitability rather than just immediate
growth.
Bhutan is undergoing an important political and economic transition. And the
aspirations of its population are also changing. Its monarchy gave way to a
parliamentary democracy in 2008.
The economy has been growing rapidly; gross domestic product expanded by 7 per
cent, 12 per cent, 9 per cent and 5 per cent in the past four fiscal years. Incomes
are also growing. Extensive construction activity can be seen along the Babesa
Highway south of the capital Thimpu.
According to the Statistics Bureau, investment by financial institutions in the building
and construction sector soared from 5.8 billion ngultrum (S$118 million) in 2008 to
14.5 billion ngultrum in 2012.
BACKGROUND STORY
I found during two taxi rides that the young part-time drivers were
graduates who also had office jobs. There seemed to be a sense of despair
at the lack of full-time jobs.
TO READ THE FULL STORY...
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Bhutan beckons investors
The country is more than its happiness index. Opportunities abound in this small frontier market. •
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South Asia needs S$3.5 trillion
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05/09/14http://www.straitstimes.com/the-big-story/asia-report/bhutan/story/bhutan-beckons-inve...

2. By SOURAJIT AIYER
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
W
ITH a population
of about 750,000,
Bhutan rarely
evokes the inter-
est of internation-
al investors. However, opportuni-
ties exist for those willing to look
at specific sectors and focus on po-
tential profitability rather than
just immediate growth.
Bhutan is undergoing an impor-
tant political and economic transi-
tion. And the aspirations of its
population are also changing. Its
monarchy gave way to a parlia-
mentary democracy in 2008.
The economy has been growing
rapidly; gross domestic product
expanded by 7 per cent, 12 per
cent, 9 per cent and 5 per cent in
the past four fiscal years. Incomes
are also growing. Extensive con-
struction activity can be seen
along the Babesa Highway south
of the capital Thimpu.
According to the Statistics Bu-
reau, investment by financial insti-
tutions in the building and con-
struction sector soared from 5.8
billion ngultrum (S$118 million) in
2008 to 14.5 billion ngultrum in
2012.
Bhutanese professionals tell me
home owners are trying out new
interior designs. But while the
building boom is backed by de-
mand, not all have the necessary
capability to buy.
Education enrolment has risen,
but job creation lags. I found dur-
ing two taxi rides that the young
part-time drivers were graduates
who also had office jobs.
There seemed to be a sense of
despair at the lack of full-time
jobs. Most of the low-income
workers appear to be from India,
judging from the Hindi music they
listen to on their radios.
Most youths prefer the “punk”
look. Girls are also fashion con-
scious. An expatriate working
with an international group notes
that young Bhutanese are big fans
of the Korean programmes that re-
flect middle-class lifestyles.
Those with good incomes are
willing to spend. News reports
suggest that cars are now larger
and in greater numbers. New cof-
fee shops and restaurants are
sprouting up, and average prices
seem higher than in Thailand or In-
dia. But since Bhutan still has
very few such outlets, proprietors
may be taking advantage of the
lack of competition.
These changes are throwing up
sector-specific micro opportuni-
ties, such as:
í Electric cars: Environmental
reasons apart, Thimphu is small
and should suit intra-city driving.
People owning electric cars would
rarely be far from a battery charg-
ing point.
Bhutanese professionals re-
mark that youngsters increasingly
preferred to drive rather than
walk. Cabbies say cars imported
from India cost about 20 per cent
to 25 per cent more than in India.
But electric cars would have to be
priced competitively, or they will
be out of reach for most people.
í Processed and packaged foods:
Such foods are becoming increas-
ingly popular, going by the stocks
in department stores. Hygiene is
one reason. Another is longevity.
Daily cooking is not practical with
a working population increasingly
comprising both men and women.
í Mobile value-added services
(VAS): Bhutan has moved from
having no mobile phones to claim-
ing more than 70 per cent mobile
penetration in less than seven
years. Annual subscriber growth
is in excess of 100 per cent. This
suggests potential for mobile VAS
providers to tie up with local net-
works for mobile gaming, tones,
infotainment, live streaming,
m-commerce, and so on.
í Solar renewable energy: The
sunlight in Bhutan is intense due
to its high altitude and low pollu-
tion levels. Being mountainous,
the country also has land tracts
not suitable for real estate or agri-
culture. These are located in the
east of the city across the river, in
the west near a television tower,
and in the south around the Bud-
dha view-point. These places
would be suitable for the construc-
tion of solar photovoltaic panels
on mountain inclines.
í Finance: The propensity to
save has never really caught on.
Ratio of savings (excluding time
deposits) to gross domestic prod-
uct has hovered between 9 per
cent and 13 per cent over the past
five years. This could constrain
the ability of banks to lend.
Local professionals, however,
say the appetite for initial public
offerings on the stock market is
huge. The recent listing involving
Dungsam Polymers, a manufactur-
er of polythene bags, was
over-subscribed by about three
times.
With people’s wallets estimat-
ed to grow, potential future list-
ings might warrant the attention
of boutique banks. Online trading
has picked up and offers scope for
technology providers to partner
with local brokers.
í E-commerce: Bhutan has good
Internet connectivity and most
young people are literate and com-
puter-savvy. There is a hunger for
the latest products, including cas-
ual fashion, electronic goods and
entertainment that could be sold
online. The market for formal
clothes, however, is limited since
most people wear traditional at-
tire at work.
í Pre-fabricated furniture: The
building boom is fuelling demand
for furniture, meaning timber. But
this is something Bhutan might
want to avoid to maintain its eco-
logical balance.
í Hang-out zones: Changing
lifestyles mean socialising in fash-
ionable coffee shops and restau-
rants in the city centre. The 1990s
music played in most of these plac-
es seems to attract many young
people. But there are not many
such outlets. If the number of
high-income earners grows, there
could be opportunities for more
such businesses across the city.
í Vocational and professional
courses: The construction of the
Knowledge Park and IT Park
shows the government is taking
higher education seriously. This
emphasis on higher education sug-
gests a chance for entrepreneurs
to provide professional and voca-
tional courses in information tech-
nology, hotel management, graph-
ics and industrial skills, thus build-
ing expertise and making students
job-ready and employable.
í Online newspapers: Local
newspapers are small and have
limited global content. This pro-
vides opportunities for online
newspapers, with both news and
infotainment content, gaining rev-
enue from either advertising or
subscriptions.
í Travel: Those not travelling as
part of a group package would ap-
preciate a good online booking ser-
vice. My own experience suggests
the online booking process is not
streamlined for individual budget
travelling. But luxury hotels offer-
ing a variety of indoor services
may find only limited demand.
Since most foreign visitors pay a
per-day fee, which limits the
number of days they can remain
in the country, most prefer to stay
in budget hotels and spend their
time outdoors.
Is it justified to look at these op-
portunities, given that Bhutan is
such a small market? Absolute
profits may be low, but the pic-
ture is different if the focus is in
terms of return on equity. Larger
markets offer higher growth po-
tential. But companies entering
such environments also face great-
er competition and will not be
able to break even for some time.
Meanwhile, Bhutan’s govern-
ment will have to think about
opening up the economy to for-
eign investors further in order to
provide increased economic oppor-
tunities for its jobless youth.
Bhutan may be a small “fron-
tier” market, but it is not without
opportunities.
stopinion@sph.com.sg
The author works with a leading capital
markets company in India.
By PIERRE DE VOS
T
HE week has not begun
well for Oscar Pisto-
rius. Under relentless
cross-examination
from prosecutor Gerrie
Nel, the Paralympian athlete,
standing trial for shooting and kill-
ing his girlfriend Reeva
Steenkamp, came across as an eva-
sive witness.
Pistorius first told the court he
had “accidentally discharged” his
firearm, then he said he acted out
of fear because he thought his life
was in danger, and then he said he
did not mean to pull the trigger.
Only the second of these claims
provides a plausible legal defence.
Because there was no actual
threat to Pistorius’ life, he cannot
rely on the principle of self-de-
fence. However, in South African
law, the principle of putative
self-defence may apply where the
accused genuinely believed his or
her life was threatened.
Where accused people are
found to have genuinely believed
their life was in danger and to
have accordingly believed they
were using reasonable means to
avert an attack on themselves or
their property, they may escape
conviction for murder on the
grounds that they lacked requisite
intention.
Pistorius, therefore, has to con-
vince the court that his vulnerabili-
ty, as a disabled person living in
South Africa, genuinely led him to
believe his life was in danger from
an intruder hiding behind a closed
toilet door. The court must fur-
ther be convinced that his re-
sponse – pumping four bullets
through the door – was reasona-
ble in the circumstances.
For a person living outside
South Africa, this may seem a
tough ask. It may not seem re-
motely reasonable to shoot four
“zombie-stopper” bullets into a
door without having been directly
threatened by an attacker and
without knowing who was hiding
behind it.
However, at the heart of the de-
fence is an assumption that the
high crime rate in South Africa,
coupled with Pistorius’ vulnerable
state as a disabled person, ren-
dered his actions reasonable.
It is true that the rate of violent
crime in South Africa is high. Al-
though the murder rate has de-
creased substantially from 68.1
murders per 100,000 people in
1995/1996 to 30.3 per 100,000 in
2011/2012, this number remains
extremely high. But statistics
from different police stations also
indicate that violent crime is far
more rife in black townships than
in the middle-class areas where
most white people live.
Pistorius lived in one of the
many gated communities that
have sprung up in response to the
perceived threat of violent crime
against middle-class people.
Often built in an identical
faux-Tuscan style, houses in such
communities are usually also kit-
ted out with an elaborate alarm
system, as was Pistorius’.
Such communities are typically
surrounded by a high wall with an
electric fence on top; the entrance
to the community is always strict-
ly controlled.
It was exactly because Pisto-
rius lived in a gated community
that he could sleep with the win-
dows of his bedroom open. That
he lived in such a place, therefore,
presents a major difficulty for the
defence. Most middle-class South
Africans not living in such commu-
nities perform elaborate rituals at
night to lock doors and security
gates, and to activate alarm sys-
tems linked to the offices of pri-
vate security companies on
24-hour call in the event of the
alarm being tripped.
The obsession with violent
crime displayed by some mid-
dle-class white people in South Af-
rica, usually in fearful discussions
at dinner parties and on radio talk
shows, has become something of
a cliche. It is made fun of by come-
dians and those wishing to display
their enthusiastic support for the
so-called “new South Africa”.
This fear became prominent
around the time when South Afri-
ca made the transition from white
minority rule to democracy.
When white South Africans ex-
press an acute fear of violent
crime, it can often sound like fear
of crime has become a more ac-
ceptable way for white people to
express their fear of black people
and of a government led by black
people.
Pistorius needs to convince the
court that his alleged fear of an in-
truder was not irrational and his
response to this alleged fear was
reasonable. That is why he has al-
leged that he has, on several occa-
sions, been the victim of crime.
stopinion@sph.com.sg
The writer is Claude Leon Foundation
chairman in constitutional governance at
University of Cape Town. This article
first appeared in The Conversation
(http://theconversation.com), a website
that carries analysis by academics and
researchers in Australia and Britain.
By ROBERT MUGGAH
and ILONA SZABO DE CARVALHO
W
ITH just two
months to go un-
til the start of
the World Cup,
a sense of panic
is gripping Rio. Cariocas, as the
city’s residents are known, are
less concerned about whether
stadiums will be built on time
than with the direction of the
state police department’s
once-lauded pacification pro-
gramme. The pacification police
units – or UPPs – were intended
to retake control of neighbour-
hoods previously controlled by
heavily armed drug barons, with
the goal of eventually re-inte-
grating these communities back
into the city.
Many people now fear that
the pacification
police units are
unravelling and
that violence in
some of Rio’s
600 slums –
known as fave-
las – is getting
out of control.
The state’s gov-
ernor recently
called for mas-
sive reinforce-
ments from the
Brazilian Army,
with more than
2,500 soldiers
deployed to the
Mare slum earli-
er this month.
Local newspa-
pers are predict-
ing the demise
of the state’s flagship public se-
curity programme before the
world’s biggest sporting event
gets under way.
Violence and petty crime
have clearly increased in some
areas of the city over the past
months. Nineteen police officers
have been assassinated since the
start of the year, more than in
all of last year. But the militarisa-
tion of policing is likely going to
make a bad situation worse. As
heavily armed soldiers and
shock troops begin pouring into
the city’s largest favelas, Rio’s
authorities risk reversing the
progress made by the country’s
most effective community polic-
ing experiment in a generation.
Instead, there is now tough
talk of killing traffickers and lib-
erating the city’s poor from the
clutches of sinister drug gangs.
Some media outlets are uninten-
tionally stigmatising the favelas
as havens of crime and drugs, re-
inforcing the government’s hard
line. Critically important discus-
sions on ways to expand public
services – health, education and
sanitation – are being overtaken
by the rhetoric of fear.
Yet, for all its imperfections,
Rio’s pacification programme
has generated impressive re-
sults. Since its launch in late
2008, the initiative has set up 37
permanent police posts target-
ing 257 communities and reach-
ing approximately 1.5 million
people. It has contributed to a
dramatic 65 per cent reduction
of lethal violence in “pacified ar-
eas” between 2008 and 2012. In
newly pacified neighbourhoods,
homicide rates are 9.2 per
100,000, compared with 18.8
per 100,000 in the rest of the
city. These are startling num-
bers for a country that experienc-
es, on average, 50,000 murders
per year.
There are also less open carry-
ing of firearms and a growing lev-
el of confidence among commu-
nity residents to criticise violent
policing operations and demand
better quality public services.
There have also been some
setbacks. Theft and robbery
have increased in some areas,
though this may be partly be-
cause crimes are more widely re-
ported than before. There are al-
so legitimate concerns that the
gentrification in some pacified
areas has forced locals to leave
the neighbourhoods they have
lived in for decades.
Now, more than ever, there is
a need to improve and consoli-
date public security efforts in
Rio. Although it is tempting, the
state and city governments must
not resort to the repressive tac-
tics of the past. They should re-
call that before the pacification
programme began, Rio’s military
police killed one
out of every 23
people they ar-
rested between
1985 and 2008.
Today, there
are more than
9,000 police
officers newly
trained in hu-
man rights and
community out-
reach. While a
small number
have been impli-
cated in the ex-
cessive use of
force, they are
not as ruthless
as in the past.
But with elite
troops now in-
volved in train-
ing police pacification units,
there is a risk of reverting to the
harsh practices that have not
been used since Brazil’s days un-
der a dictatorship.
Rather than dispensing with
pacification, Rio de Janeiro
needs to double down on it. Pub-
lic safety in Rio or anywhere can-
not be achieved by focusing on
policing alone. There is also an
urgent need to reap the social
and economic dividends generat-
ed by the pacification project.
To do so will require letting peo-
ple hold title to their property
and improving access to basic
services for low-income resi-
dents. It will also mean identify-
ing meaningful employment op-
portunities for poor young men
– who are most likely to be the
perpetrators and victims of vio-
lent crime.
In a crisis, there is a tempta-
tion to resort to “us” versus
“them” narratives. Yet precisely
the opposite is needed: a dia-
logue with the community lead-
ers who live Rio’s war on a daily
basis. This conversation needs
to be joined not only by the po-
lice, but also by politicians, en-
trepreneurs, academics and ac-
tivists.
Pacification will fail if it is
not accompanied by serious in-
vestment and a commitment to
integrating hillside favelas with
the glitzy beachfront neighbour-
hoods where the better-off re-
side. And for genuine peace to
emerge in time for the World
Cup, much less the Olympics,
Cariocas, of all classes, need to
ask themselves what kind of soci-
ety they want to build. Will secu-
rity be a public good shared by
all, or the preserve of a select
few?
Robert Muggah is the research director
at the SecDev Foundation and at the
Igarape Institute, where Ilona Szabo de
Carvalho is executive director.
NEW YORK TIMES
Bhutan
beckons
investors
Bhutanese children at a window. Most young people are literate and computer-savvy and there is a hunger for the latest products, including casual fashion and
electronic goods that could be sold online. Bhutan is undergoing an important political and economic transition. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The country is more than
its happiness index.
Opportunities abound in
this small frontier market.
Pacification will
fail if it is not
accompanied by
serious
investment and
a commitment
to integrating
hillside favelas
with the glitzy
beachfront
neighbour-
hoods.
Public security efforts
in Rio need a rethink
I found during two
taxi rides that the
young part-time
drivers were
graduates who
also had office
jobs. There seemed
to be a sense of
despair at the lack
of full-time jobs.
The fear that grips white South Africa
F R I D A Y , A P R I L 1 8 , 2 0 1 4 OOPPIINNIIOONN A33