ISLAMABAD: World Bank Group Country Director Patchamuthu llangovan visited Board of Investment on Wednesday and met with BoI Chairman Naeem Y Zamindar.
The BOI chairman said that Pakistan is one of the few South Asian countries which ranks high in the WB indicator of Ease of Doing Business. The pursuits of policies of liberalisation, deregulation, and disinvestment during the last two decades have brought about significant improvements in domestic and foreign investments. He said that WB and BoI have been business reform partners since 2014 when first Doing Business Action Plan was inaugurated .Currently, the engagement is on two initiatives. First one is “Ease of Doing Business Initiative” and the second one is “Non-lending Technical Assistance”. BoI along with Finance Division has worked closely with WB on monitoring of the doing business reforms in both federal and provincial levels. Finance Division and BoI have formulated the Doing Business Strategy 2016 with assistance of WB and collaboration of Finance Division.
This collaboration is now extended to Doing Business action plan for 2018 which is under process of finalisation.
The chairman BoI said that BoI organized two seminars to update the existing and potential contributions of the reforms under taken by the government so far with the support of WB and during this Pakistan improved its ranking in 2017.
The chairman BoI further added that considering the changes in the investment climate of the country and diversifying work of BoI, a technical assistance was sought from WB regarding “Capacity Building of BoI officers”, “Investment Policy” and “Redesigning of BoI website”.
