PBF seeks PM’s urgent intervention to ‘restore economic competitiveness’

KARACHI: The Pakistan Business Forum (PBF) has written a letter to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, urging his personal and urgent intervention to arrest the declining business confidence and restore the competitiveness of Pakistan’s economy.

In its letter, PBF President Khawaja Mehboob ur Rehman highlighted that 2025 has once again proven to be an extremely challenging year for businesses and industry. Despite repeated commitments by successive governments, the fundamental demand of the business community was ease of doing business and a reduction in the cost of operations has not been addressed in a meaningful or sustainable manner.

The PBF noted that persistently high input costs, soaring energy tariffs, and an increasingly uncompetitive tax regime continue to erode industrial productivity, weaken exports, and discourage both local and foreign investment.

These pressures have significantly reduced Pakistan’s ability to compete with regional economies that actively support their industries through competitive pricing and pro-growth fiscal policies.

Referring to the successful defense of the country by Pakistan’s armed forces in May 2025, the PBF stated that while the nation has demonstrated strength and unity on the security front, the next critical challenge is winning the economic battle.

The business community, the PBF emphasised, is ready to play its role, provided it is equipped with the necessary competitive tools to operate in regional and global markets.

Among these tools, the Forum identified two reforms as absolutely critical:

regionally competitive electricity tariffs, and regionally competitive corporate tax rates.

Without alignment on these fronts, Pakistani businesses will remain at a structural disadvantage compared to their counterparts in neighboring countries.

The PBF expressed serious concern that current economic policymaking, particularly within the Ministry of Finance, remains largely confined to compliance with IMF programme conditions, with insufficient focus on innovative, growth-oriented, and business-friendly solutions. and on other hand dollar kept control artificially on higher side in the whole year despite reserves were on higher side.

The PBF also reiterated that sustainable economic recovery cannot be achieved without empowering the business community, which remains the backbone of employment generation, exports, and revenue creation.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025