LAHORE: SAARC Chamber of Commerce & Industry Vice President and United Business Forum (UBF) Chairman Iftikhar Ali Malik has said that nobody will be allowed to play havoc with the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI) that is the largest platform of the business community.
He expressed these views while addressing the FPCCI Executive Committee meeting, in which Businessmen Panel got their agenda passed with a thumping majority, while rival group secured only 5 votes.
Iftikhar Ali Malik said that some elements were trying to use FPCCI for their vested interests but business community had rejected them and chosen true representatives of business community. He said that country was passing through a critical time of its history, adding that political instability, severe energy crisis, high rate of markup, highest in the world banking spread were impeding the economic growth of the country. FPCCI would focus these issues and prepare well-thought suggestions to the government for early solution, he added.
Iftikhar Ali Malik said that said that tight monetary policy was not the only solution to fast increasing inflation but it could be tackled easily by increasing production and cutting unnecessary expenditures. He said that for increasing production, the business community would have to spend its energies for increasing exports, particularly the export of non-traditional items needs to be focused.
He said that High Mark-up was crushing the whole industrial sector like anything and this would be taken up with all the authorities concerned for a solution. He said that simplification of taxes would also be on his priority list.
Iftikhar said that the main objective of the FPCCI was promotion of trade and industry and all available resources would be utilized for economic turnaround as the economic meltdown had now started taking its toll and everybody in suffering badly.
