Pakistan has attracted a total of $12.52 billion net foreign direct investment (FDI) from 2013-14 till 2019-2020 (up to December 2019). In a written reply to a question of a member of National Assembly during the question hour session, the minister in-charge of the Prime Minister's officer said that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government has taken steps to attract foreign investment.
He said that the government has established Project Management Unit for Industrial Cooperation under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to market and facilitate the projects/activities in collaborations with the concerned stakeholders and also to resolve their issues.
"The Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Act was promulgated in 2012 to facilitate domestic and foreign investors to invest in manufacturing sector with incentives to SEZ developers, as well as enterprises," he said. He said that as many as 7 SEZs were notified; however, in 2019 six more new SEZs have been notified by the present government, adding the SEZ Act is being proposed to be made more business friendly.
He said that the government has planned a number of conferences in UK, China, Saudi Arabia and UAE to showcase local products of investment in these countries and create business to business (B2B) networking. "Board of Investment (BOI) has integrated investors' grievances cell with citizen portal cell introduced by the Prime Minister Office to further enhance the investors' confidence on the government's resolve to solve their problems," he added.
About GSP plus, the commerce minister in a written reply said that for the third biennial review (2018-2020), the government has submitted its response to the list of issues and follow-up questions including ten identified priority areas to the European Union, adding based on Pakistan's report, the EU has prepared its report which will be shared with the EU Parliament.
He said that the GSP plus Scheme (2018-2020) is going to be completed in early February 2020. "The EU has given no such indication on the withdrawal of GSP Plus status from Pakistan. Extensive lobbying is ongoing within Pakistan with all EU missions and in all capitals of EU countries including EU headquarter at Brussels," he added.
The minister of commerce said that the government has adopted a prudent policy of letting the market-forces determine the exchange rate which resulted in the gradual depreciation of Pak rupee.
However, he said that during financial year 2019 Pakistan's exports decreased by -0.94 percent from $ 23.3 billion to $ 22.98 billion; however, the trade deficit decreased by 5.84 percent. He said that trend of exports during the current fiscal year has been promising as exports showing a positive growth of 3.15 percent.
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