Tariq Rehman joined EMCO Industries - a company manufacturing electrical accessories and ceramic materials - in 1972, and is currently serving as its CEO. Rehman acquired his education in engineering from the University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore and the Ohio State University, USA. He serves on the board of various companies in the country.
Educating future industrialists Tariq Rehman believes in bottom-up growth of the economy. Himself an engineer, and currently the Managing Director of Emco Industries, a KSE-listed electric insulator & tile manufacturing company, Rehman wants the industry to backward link with the academia - in order to give the economy the much-needed boost.
"I think the country denies that producing simple engineers is not enough to solve issues; we need unique human skills and resources," says Tariq, adding that the focus should be on textile-related engineering.
"Textile machineries have approximately 30 to 40 thousand spare parts; and this spare part industry has a huge potential. Since we do not produce this technology, my advice is to merge the textile and engineering sectors so that at least spare parts should be produced locally," said Rehman.
The same steps should be taken for the auto sector, and the import of spare parts should be limited through duties and rationalizing local taxes, he added.
"Automotive parts sector has a lot of potential for export; there are a few examples where people have benefited from exports of auto parts through Dutch organisations that help bring together the producers in the developing world with the end users in Europe. So, we have to mobilise these people to export to the rest of the world," said Rehman.
Quoting a global trade study, Rehman told BR Research that the engineering sector is the largest contributor to global trade; it has an approximate 50 percent contribution to the global economy whereas that of textile is about 5 percent. In order to turn this dynamic around, says Rehman, there is dire need to document and formalise the engineering sector.
"At its heart, Pakistans engineering sector is unorganised, i.e. 80 percent of our engineering products are produced by unorganised and widely dispersed factories. Yet, despite that, some of these sell products to international firms who re-package and then supply them under their brand names" he said while highlighting the unlocked potential of a formalised engineering goods industry.
"Pakistan has very hard working people, and the talent and potential of the unorganised sector should be exploited, by opening up institutes and training workshops to educate the people of the informal sector.
Rehman also stresses on the notion of reaching out to rural economies by selecting people from their own districts and towns and training them to become trainers in their respective villages.
"In villages, the thirst for knowledge is huge, but since urban people do not understand the complications of the rural life, somebody from their own backyard should be groomed to impart the requisite knowledge," says Rehman.
Terming a trained manpower as Pakistans
eal asset, Rehman calls upon authorities to set up university towns alongside the industrial hubs.
"We need a much larger number of universities in Pakistan; foreign universities should also be invited to open their campuses in Pakistan...we should give land grants of up to 100 years and make university towns," he said.
Another benefit of producing good human capital, says Rehman, is that of high quality labour export. "We have huge human potential so we can train our people and send them to the West, where the population is by and large aging. India is developing human resource faster than us so somebody has to take the initiative to train people and export them," he said.
Sticking to his proposal to turn rural economies into small pockets of growth, Rehman suggests the setting up of specialised engineering towns or clusters where, guided by experts, the people can provide processed materials or spare parts for engineering and other goods.
"Take for example, DG Khan; it is the heart of Pakistan and joins the four provinces together. From its south the trucks come and then they go to Baluchistan, KP and Punjab. Since, the number of trucks coming is huge, DG Khan can produce mechanics for these trucks," Rehman said while highlighting "the need to assess the requirements of a specific region and making a cluster, so that it can be marketed immediately".
Rehman says the same cluster approach could be applied to resolve the countrys worsening energy crisis. "The government should make clusters and build small-to-medium 100 to 200 MW plants to provide to these clusters of steel, textile and other industries," he elaborated.
When asked which of his many proposals would he be personally interested to work on, Rehman, who is also associated with a 500-plus beds tertiary care teaching hospital as public service, quickly responds with what is close to his heart: I would support any programme that can bring the academia and industry together - that is the need of the hour.
Interview by Ali Khizar Aslam