Coronavirus outbreak: WCCI hails PM's special economic package

The Women Chamber of Commerce and Industry (WCCI) Peshawar here on sunday welcomed the PM special economic relief package amid outbreak to coronavirus pandemic in the country, demanding to extend the same special monetary package for small medium enterprises (SMEs) sector, which also adversely affected in wake of coronavirus pandemic.
The WCCI senior leader Ms Fitrat Ilyas Bilour and the women chamber president Ms Rukhsana Nadir in a joint statement issued here on Sunday appreciated the PM economic relief package and sought the trickle down positive impacts of the special relief package on poor masses and revival of ailing economic and industrialization growth in the country.
WCCI leaders said that the small industries and businesses have closed down and are facing immense financial losses amid outbreak of coronavirus pandemic in the province. Therefore, they demanded of the government to include small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the recently announced PM economic relief package in order to avoid them from further fiscal loss.
Ms Rukhsana Nadir termed the reduction of 1.5 per cent in interest rate announced by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) as insufficient to mitigate the sufferings of businessmen and investors, called to bring down the markup rate to single digit in upcoming fiscal budget for 2020-21 in the larger interest of trade, industry and economy.
The WCCI chief also demanded the two weeks extension in payment of electricity and gas bills of small industries as well as deferment loans of commercial institutions worth billions of rupees, whereas she also stressed to bring reduction in taxes, especially for small and medium industries and businesses.
She furthermore urged the government and State Bank of Pakistan to rescheduled loans which had disbursed to different business and commercial institutions and bring down markup rate to single digit.
While praising decision of Prime Minister Imran Khan for issuance of refunds payments, Ms Rukhsana Nadir said the decision should be implemented with letter and spirit to ensure timely issuance of payments of refunds to industries, exporters and importers.