Pervaiz Malik,the newly inducted commerce minister, has expressed the hope that the joint efforts of the government and the private sector would make it possible to achieve the export target of $35 billion by 2018. The export target was set by the government in its three-year Strategic Trade Policy Framework under former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 2015. However, after two years of the framework, the government begin to realize that the policy is a failure and needs to be revised or discarded. The failure has not come as a surprise for the economists as its earlier version, introduced by the Pakistan People’s government in 2012, had met the same fate. Whenever a public office holder assumes charge, he repeats the mantra of common phrases that he will do this or that to achieve the desired goals, but completes his tenure without doing anything.
Malik has expressed the hope that with cooperation of the chambers of commerce and industry and other business associations, the government will be able to achieve the export target within the time frame. However, fine words butter no parsnips. The Strategic Trade Policy Framework is meeting the fate not different from the previous government policies. The commerce and industrial sectors need reforms to boost not only local trade but also exports. A big question before the new minister should be to identify the causes of the falling exports in the current industrial environment. The industry is facing the same old problems such as energy crisis, irrational rates of taxes and incoherent economic policies. All the hostile factors come together to slow the wheel of development. The Nawaz government has gone without implementing his own agenda of industrial reforms in four years of its tenure. The economy suffered at the hand of the person who claimed that his agenda of the government is business, business and business.
The businessmen face various challenges, most of the time at the hands of the authorities which are meant to facilitate them. At least Rs300 billion deposited by exporters with the government as an assurance that export earnings will be repatriated to Pakistan have still not been refunded. Bangladesh which as almost half of the GDP of Pakistan is going to fix $40 billion export target. The other countries in the region have also made forward leap to reap the benefits of regional trade but we as a nation have failed to install even a stable political system in the country. We are heading toward unpredictable future.
