LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry (LCCI) in its budget proposals for the financial year 2016-17 has called for encouraging local manufacturers to invest in China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Projects.
Talking to the media here, LCCI President Sheikh Muhammad Arshad, Senior Vice President Almas Hyder and Vice President Nasir Saeed said here Saturday that projects like CPEC had the capacity to stimulate the local economy by increasing the demand for locally manufactured goods.
Sheikh Arshad said, "Such increase in demand will not only allow full utilization of the existing manufacturing potential, but will also encourage the manufacturers to increase their capacity."
He said that this would generate much needed employment opportunities, and also contribute a sizeable amount of revenue to the national exchequer.
The LCCI office-bearers said that local manufacturers were facing numerous problems, therefore, the government must take effective measures to include locally produced goods from all power projects above 25MW.
They said that in most of the cases, import duty on raw materials was increased from 10 percent to 20 percent, which resulted in higher raw material costs for the local manufacturers.
They added that declaring zero percent custom duty (serial no 12 of Fifth Schedule) and sales tax (serial no 7 of Table 3 Sixth Schedule) on the import of machinery, equipment and spare parts had made it impossible for the local manufacturers to benefit from the huge economic activity CPEC was expected to generate.
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