ISLAMABAD: Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Commerce Shibli Faraz, termed the widening trade deficit to the sheer incompetence and negligence of the Ministry of Commerce (MoC).
Speaking on a motion under Rule 218 that the house may discuss the present position of balance of trade of the country, he said that MoC had failed in implementing the previous strategic trade policy as well as issuing the new trade policy. Resultantly, the exports were declining with the passage of each day and trade deficit had mounted to 7.8% of the total economy.
MoC has linked reduced volume of exports to some international factors including reducing prices of petroleum products, market crashes, lowered production of cotton crop in the country, but MoC has not described the actual and genuine reasons behind the reduced quantity of exports” he added.
Moreover, he said that MoC should explain reasons behind the increasing oil import bill despite decreasing petroleum products in the international markets. Similarly, Ministry of Commerce must also explain why textile exports are decreasing despite the fact that Pakistan is one of top producers of cotton of fine quality in the world.
Main reasons for lowering textile exports is that our products are not compatible with the products of other countries just because higher cost of production, he said adding that higher power tariff for industrial units and other factors were making increasing cost of production of our finished goods.
He added that non serious attitude on the part of MoC towards declining exports as well as inactiveness for addressing the main hurdles in the exports were main reasons behind the widening trade deficit.
This was why an average trade deficit of $ 10 billion had been in last six months, but on the contrary government remained focused on increasing volume of foreign exchange reserves by dint of huge borrowings from international monetary institutions.
