Economic challenges: FPCCI for designing policies in consultation with real stakeholders

LAHORE: The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has called for taking the real stakeholders onboard for an ultimate object of sustainable and inclusive growth trajectory.

FPCCI President Mian Anjum Nisar while appreciating the government commitment to follow macroeconomic fundamentals through effective policy-making and targeted reforms on Saturday stressed the need for designing policies in consultation with real stakeholders to address economic challenges like inflation, stagnant exports and resource mobilization.

Major economic indicators are showing positive growth which manifested the fact that the government has put the economy in the right direction, saying the policymaking in consultation with the private sector will overcome the economic challenges, besides removing hitches to speedy economic recovery, he said.

He said that there was significant growth in foreign reserves and foreign direct investment with decline in the current account deficit. The large scale manufacturing sector was also showing improvement. He hoped that the exports would register a sharp improvement in Oct 2020. He said that current account balance is in surplus, which will have a positive impact on the exchange rate stability of the currency.

He said the economic outreach initiative launched by PM Imran Khan would bring a positive change. Efforts should also be made to highlight the country's soft image across the world, he demanded.

Sharing the data of exports, the FPCCI President said that the export figures for Sep 2020 have shown improvement as compared to Sep 2019, growing by 6 percent to $1.87 billion. He, however, believed that there is still room for improvement, as this is better than decline of 15 percent in Aug exports. He said that our exports are limited to a few merchandise and dependent on a few countries which was the biggest reason of decline in exports.

He urged the government to conduct market research to find out new destinations for the Pakistani products which are best in the world as far as quality and price is concerned. He said that Pakistani Missions abroad should be duty-bound to introduce Pakistani products to the foreign buyers and also ensure dissemination of trade related information so that Pakistan entrepreneurs could avail trade opportunities to the maximum. He said there are a number of issues that must be resolved on priority basis. The biggest one is how to keep the momentum of growth in the wake of a less than targeted growth of the agriculture and the manufacturing sector.

The frequent increases in the prices of energy are making Pakistani products uncompetitive in the international market and Pakistan is losing the international markets to China, India and even Bangladesh. Although the oil prices were linked to international prices of oil, the benefit of decline in oil prices has not been passed on to the consumers for quite a long time.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020