ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry has called upon the government to extend full support to industrial sector in enhancing its production capacity that would go a long way in increasing country’s exports and revenue. It said the lack of investment was a major factor due to which industry could not produce efficiently to meet the global standards.
Ahmed Hassan Moughal, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that the current government has made strenuous efforts to increase exports from the existing capacities of industry and boost revenues, but this strategy has not produced desired results so far. He said there was a dire need to increase investment in industrial sector for enhancing its capacity for producing high quality and value added exportable products.
Ahmed Hassan Moughal said that Pakistan’s exports remained stagnant from 2012-13 despite the fact that many incentive schemes and subsidies were offered to industry to boost exports. However, these initiatives have not been able to bring any significant increase in exports. He said that rupee have depreciated by over 30 percent, but still exports of five major sectors have not shown any significant improvement. This situation called for conducting a thorough analysis to find out the reasons behind stagnant exports.
ICCI President said that government should focus on reducing high energy cost and power tariffs and rationalize federal and provincial taxes on industrial sector that would be instrumental in improving exports and revenue.
Rafat Farid Senior Vice President and Iftikhar Anwar Sethi Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry said that government support for investment in efficient equipment and machines would help in boosting exports. They said that industrial sector has not been able to attract new investment for the last many years in a big way due to which our exports remained almost at same level. They said since the new industries were not coming up while the existing industries could also not scale up according to the changing needs due to which most of our industries were producing low-value products.
They emphasized that government should give land on lease for 30-50 years to serious investors so that they could establish state-of-the-art industries. They said that long-term loans should be provided at subsidized rates to investors with the aim to promote industrialization in the country. They further stressed that to promote investment and industrialization, government should also address issues like difficult business climate, lengthy dispute resolution processes, poor intellectual property rights (IPR) enforcement, and inconsistent taxation policies.
