July 10, 2017
President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President All Karachi Industrial Alliance (AKIA), Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and Former Provincial Minister Mian Zahid Hussain has lauded the decision of the government to revise trade policy to make it business friendly.
The three-year policy would be improved on all the levels so that it can help exporters improve quality and quantity of the exports which are going down since some time, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that the Strategic Trade Policy Framework that was aimed at expanding exports to thirty five billion dollars within three years by improving export competitiveness has largely remained unimplemented.
Most of the proposals of trade policy remained on paper bringing exports down to almost 20 billion dollars which were twenty five billion dollars in 2013, he added.
He said that now the policy is being revised and all the stakeholders will also be taken on board before finalising the draft which will be submitted to the Cabinet for the approval.
The Business Leader said that there should be one policy to promote textile and non-textile exports which are forty percent of the all exports.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that most of the initiatives like product design, technology upgrade, branding and certification failed to perform in the case of the textile sector and non-textile products due to friction and lack of support by the authorities concerned.
Most of the funds allocated for the purpose also lapsed which the private sector took almost no interest in the initiative due to stringent conditions which are now being relaxed, he observed.
Lack of coordination among the concerned departments and want of human resource continue to hurt such initiatives and keep the on paper, away from implementation, he added.
