ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Business Council (PBC) Chairman Ziad Bashir called on Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb to discuss the economic outlook and a working agenda between the Council and the Ministry.
Both sides agreed that stabilisation has been achieved and that the task now is to convert it into growth, a handout said. “Stability is a floor, not a destination. The discussion focused on what the private sector and the government can do jointly to lift output, exports and employment.”
Broadening the tax base was the first area of agreement. The Chairman offered PBC’s support in bringing the retail and services sectors into the documented net, noting that the burden today falls disproportionately on the formal sector while large parts of the economy remain outside it. A wider base is the only sustainable route to lower rates for compliant businesses.
On exports, the two sides discussed joint research to map Pakistan’s untapped trade potential across global markets, pro duct by product and market by market. The Chairman raised the role EXIM Bank can play in export facilitation, particularly through export credit insurance and competitively priced export financing, instruments Pakistan’s competitors already use at scale.
The meeting also covered market access. The Chairman proposed pursuing preferential arrangements with large economies, including the United States, for finished goods manufactured from imported US cotton. Value addition on American raw material re-exported to the US is a commercially logical case and should be made at the highest level.
Employment was a shared priority, with particular emphasis on increasing female labour force participation. Pakistan’s participation rate for women remains among the lowest in the region, and closing that gap is one of the largest available sources of growth.
The Chairman said the government has good ideas on the table but must implement them faster. Announcements do not create jobs or exports; execution does.
He added that the privatisation of state-owned enterprises needs to move at far greater speed. These entities cost the exchequer billions of dollars a year, money that is taken from taxpayers and from development spending to fund losses that should not exist. Offloading them is not an ideological question. It is arithmetic.
The Chairman and the Minister agreed to meet frequently and to work together on a structured agenda for the economy.
