June 14, 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 on Wednesday said government can end dependence on the IMF only if exports and imports are balanced.
Widening export-import gap has become a threat, therefore, government should immediately re-examine export strategy, cost of doing business should be reduced for the export sector and taxes should be slashed to step fall of the external sector which has endangered the country, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that trade deficit of the first 11 months has touched all time high mark of thirty billion dollars which the debt repayments will further aggravate the overall situation.
He said that exports have registered further decline, exports stood at 18.54 billion dollars in the first eleven months of the current fiscal which were 19.14 billion dollars a year ago.
Export earnings need to, more or less, match the import bill to reduce foreign dependence, he said, adding that exports can be enhanced by changing the direction of the economy and focusing on industrial expansion with special attention to the value addition.
Moreover, he said, government should try to reduce cost of doing business, improve GDP to investment ratio, announce tax breaks, and spare existing taxpayers while try to expand the tax net.
He said that all the countries of the region have changed their policies to make their export sector competitive through innovation, research, education, and by finding new markets but nothing concrete has been done in Pakistan.
The Business Leader said that our government should persuade China to increase imports from Pakistan to reduce deficit.
