PTI's 100-day agenda embraces much of PBC proposals: CEO

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's recently announced 100-day agenda incorporates much of the Pakistan Business Council's recommendations which, what the PBC says, was based on its 'Make in Pakistan' thrust.
PBC's CEO Ehsan A Malik said the council met the main political parties to seek to shape their manifestos with recommendations to generate jobs, promote value added exports and encourage imports substitution.
"PTI's 100-day agenda is the first of any party's public declaration of direction. There is a high degree of incorporation of PBC's recommendations which were based on our Make in Pakistan thrust," he said, expressing hope that other parties would duly reflect the key imperatives to strengthen domestic industry," he said.
The PBC has recommended a high-level body under the PM's leadership to scan and align all government policies that impact business. The objective is to remove the inconsistencies and strengthen inter-ministerial alignment. However, PTI's 100-day programme is to build the Council of Business Leaders chaired by the PM to improve Doing Business to improve Pakistan's Doing Business ranking within top 100.
The PBC has called for adaptation of a "Make in Pakistan" policy to generate jobs, promote value-added exports and encourage import substitution whereas the PTI has vowed to revive manufacturing to generate 10 million jobs over five years and to compete internationally.
Likewise, PBC stressed on ensuring supply of reliable energy at cost that must be competitive with countries such as Bangladesh and indigenize fuel by exploiting known reserves. The PTI in its agenda vows to bring energy costs down to regional average; shift towards more sustainable and affordable energy generation.
The council has recommended separating the tax policy-making from tax administration. It emphasised to address the technology and talent needs of the FBR to enable it to access available databases to broaden the tax base and reduce tax rates to regionally competitive levels. PBC wants the next government to simplify and unify taxes to reduce burden of compliance and ensure tax policy promotes capital formation, accumulation and consolidation and to clear refunds. PTI vows to appoint a bold, capable and dynamic FBR chairman and share a business-friendly and equitable tax policy and clear tax rebates/refunds.
The BPC recommended replacing short term transactional export packages with long term transformational policies to incentivize industry to upgrade and diversify export destinations. The PTI's agenda is to up-skill workers through TVETA and boost exports.
The PBC seeks to kick-start low and medium cost housing to address the 10 million unit shortfall and annual demand of 400,000 units. It wants to address title opacity to enable collateralization and provide avenues of long term mortgages whereas the PTI's 100-day agenda is to launch policy framework to build 5 million houses over 5 years.
The council also underscored the need to address low agriculture, livestock and dairy yields, weak supply chain, poor conversion industry and inefficient water management. Step up research into seeds. Shift focus from sugarcane and wheat to cotton, edible oilseeds, fruits and vegetables. The PTI is to urgently address poor farm productivity, raise milk and meat output and to implement the national water policy.
The PBC made recommendation on weak SME sector with lowest bank credit utilization rates in Asia, while PTI announced to incentivize SMEs to get into food processing with focus on value-added exports.
The council recommended promoting Chinese investment into labour-intensive industries and is of the view that to ensure concessions to CPEC SEZs are incrementally positive on jobs and also called for exports and import substitution and prevent leakages from transit trade. The PTI agenda is to launch CPEC action plan so as to enable growth in agriculture, industries and services with Chinese assistance.
The other PBC recommendations reflected in the PTI agenda are promoting private sector investment in tourism, bringing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) out of purview of line ministries, encourage savings, bringing deposit rate up to 50 percent of the GDP and establishment of an infrastructure lending bank.
"The PTI plan talks about moving the SOEs from the purview of the line ministries. In our view, this should eventually allow the Government to offload the restructured SOEs," the PBC's CEO concluded.