According to newspaper reports, the government has no updated record of industrial units in the country, including its largest province Punjab, giving a severe blow to the efforts to document the national economy. No updated or official industrial directory has been prepared and the available record is void of any reasonable data which could help boost industrial activities in the country. Reports suggest that red tape and mismanagement reign supreme in the official cadre with no interest in updating the record of the existing, closedor sick industrial units. The developed nations keep record of everything possible to devise not only industrial policies but also to give impetus to planning and development efforts. In this age of information technology, survey of the industrial units and maintenance of record is not an uphill task as it was in a couple of decades ago. Unavailability of updated record leads to several complications as the industrial units making good business cannot be persuaded for taxes according to the volume of their production while the closed or loss-making units are sent the tax notices in line with their previous business details.
The cottage industry of any country is considered the backbone of economy and even China and Japan started their journey to industrial development from home industries and have now become second and the third largest economies of the world. The small industrial units are provided every facility from finance to expertise in developed nations, but the departments in the country which are responsible for assisting the small industry have failed to give good performance despite heavy government budget on their disposal. However, at least management of record is the basic requirement in the modern economy and the departments responsible for the job are reeling under official rigmarole. The record of the business type, location, closed and sick units as well as unregistered units is either incomplete or missing. Only the units having stakes in the government funding are registered with the departments concerned and the un-documentation of the units is one of the impediments in the development of the national economy.
Reports suggest that hundreds of new industrial units of pharmaceuticals, food processing, engineering, textile, garments, carpet, plastics, electronics, chemicals, paints, steel and auto parts are being set up in Lahore, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Hyderabad and Peshawar and Karachi and their documentation in the official record is important. There are industrial units earing millions of rupees, but avoid to come into the tax net. It is hoped that all the provinces will update the record of industries and will share details with one and other to help the federal government streamline the economic policies.
