LAHORE: Board of Investment (BoI) Additional Secretary Ambreen Iftikhar has said that ‘Invest Pakistan’ initiative was being launched keeping in view the fact that in year 2021, US $ 175 billion were invested in South Asian countries out of which Pakistan could attract only US $ 2 billion foreign investment.
She added that Pakistan needed to take effective and appropriate measures to increase its local and foreign investments, adding that under ‘Invest Pakistan’ initiative, a national framework for investment would be developed at first.
She was briefing the business community at Invest Pakistan Concept Launch Event here at Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI) where LCCI President Kashif Anwar, BoI Director General Zulfiqar Ali and Director Adnan Munir Rajput also spoke, while the chamber’s Executive Committee members attended the event.
The Additional Secretary said that process through which BoI would encourage investors to invest in Pakistan, would be based on investors’ targeting.
She said that national framework would not only notify the investment but also help operationalize it and facilitate the investors by identifying and realizing them regarding investment opportunities.
Ambreen Iftikhar said, “Apart from this, we are taking the budget proposals in a different way. Because of the IMF conditions, we have suggested that these conditions should be shared with the private sector so that they know which policies cannot be changed and which policies have the scope. Under this new process, the suggestions of the business community will be brought into the finance bill so that they can be implemented easily.”
She added that BoI wanted all the chambers to introduce a joint plan, and ‘we understand that the business community is currently facing many challenges but the most important thing is that the government cannot solve these problems alone but we all have to come up with a joint solution because these are common problems.’ BoI Additional Secretary said, “We want to attract our own investors before the foreign investors. To know the needs of the investors, we are working on the investor targeting model.” LCCI President Kashif Anwar said that Lahore Chamber had always emphasized on simplifying the rules and regulations, and making these business friendly so that the business climate could be improved in the country, asserting that this would definitely help in promoting ‘Ease of Doing Business (EoDB)’.
