ICCI for exports diversification to improve economic growth

ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) has called upon the government to closely work with private sector for exports diversification and product sophistication as lack of export diversification has remained a major hurdle to improving economic growth and coping with balance of payments crisis in Pakistan.

Ahmed Hassan Moughal, President ICCI, in a statement here on Monday said that the mix of products exported by a country directly affected its economic growth.

He said Pakistan has always relied on exporting low value-added products including textiles, fabrics, footwear, leather and some other products due to which it mostly experienced sluggish economic growth.

However, many of our competitors have moved beyond low-value added exports to sophisticated and high value-added exports due to which they have achieved better economic growth.

ICCI President said that an analysis of Pakistan’s exports performance from 2000 to 2018 showed that our total exports remained far lower in value relative to our immediate competitors.

He said the main reason of this situation was that Pakistan could not move up from low value to high value exports.

Giving an example, he said that in 2000, the value of Pakistan’s exports was US$7.95 billion while the value of Indian exports was around US$ 43 billion, which was approximately six-fold that of Pakistan.

However, by 2018 Pakistani exports were struggling around $23 billion while the value of Indian exports had gone up to more than US$331 billion, which was more than 14 times that of Pakistani exports.

He urged that government should provide full support to the private sector in moving towards manufacturing technologically sophisticated products that would boost our exports and enhance economic growth of the country.

He said government should focus on rapid industrialization strategies and finalize new industrial policy soon with attractive incentives for manufacturing of value added products that would give boost to our exports.

He said Pakistan should further strengthen industrial cooperation with China and accelerate the process of establishing special economic zones under CPEC that would help the country to produce sophisticated products and achieve better results on exports front.