BoI organises seminar on 'Doing Business Reforms in Pakistan'

Board of Investment, Islamabad in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and World Bank organised a seminar on "Doing Business Reforms in Pakistan" at Karachi. This seminar is one of the ways to make the business community and regulators aware of the reforms that have been undertaken so far by Govt. of Pakistan in order to improve doing business ranking of Pakistan which showed an improvement of 4 points from the last year.
Azher Ali Choudhry, Secretary BOI stated that the government of Pakistan would continue to extend maximum facilitation and provide every possible support to create enabling business environment in the country. He specifically mentioned the reforms efforts of Government of Sindh in the area of land registration and expressed the hope that this initiative can contribute substantially in improving the Doing Business ranking of Pakistan.
Amjad Bashir, Senior Economist, World Bank Group apprised the participants about the methodology of the World Bank about doing business ranking highlighting the 65 percent weightage of city of Karachi and emphasised upon automation in each area of business cycle.
Umer Khalid, Investment Specialist, Economic Reforms Unit (ERU) of Finance Division shared with the participants the implementation status of key reforms implemented so far as well as upcoming doing business reforms and expressed the hope that these initiatives would contribute in improving the business environment in the country. Naheed Memon, Chairperson Sindh Board of Investment, appraised the forum about initiatives/ strategy of Government of Sindh in the areas of starting a business, getting construction permits, land registration and contract enforcement. She hinted that the focus of the government is to develop a common Web Portal in consultation with all the concerned departments/agencies. This would reduce the time and cost involved in various business processes.
The seminar was then divided into four breakout sessions focusing on the indicators as construction permits, registering property, contract enforcement and starting a business wherein the relevant experts briefed about World Bank surveys, assumptions of the case studies and sprit of various questions of questionnaires to facilitate the contributors to complete their assignments more effectively and in a better way.
The contributors were requested to convey the right information about the process, time and cost involved in doing business in Pakistan, reflecting true picture of each business area.-PR