ISLAMABAD: The federal government constituted three special committees to get good output from the newly formed Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) and Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Asim Munir will be a key member of one of these committees.
The government formed three committees of the SIFC including the Apex Committee, Executive Committee and Implementation Committee.
Apex Committee: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Pak Army Chief General Asim Munir will also be a part of the Apex Committee. Federal Ministers will also be included in the Apex Committee and its meeting will be held on a monthly basis.
COAS puts his weight behind economic plan
Implementation Committee: An implementation committee of the council has also been formed which will meet every week. The implementation committee will be led by Special Assistant to Prime Minister.
Executive Committee: The Executive Committee of SIFC has also been formed. Minister for Planning will lead the committee and the ministers of defence, petroleum, and IT will be part of it. Provincial Chief Secretaries, Secretary Board of Investment, and Secretaries of Provincial Ministries will also be part of the Executive Committee.
The government has formed the SIFC for facilitation of the foreign investment in the IT, petroleum, agriculture, energy and defence sectors in the country. PM Shehbaz Sharif has said with the help of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), the immediate task was to increase the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the country up to $5 billion.
In a post uploaded on Twitter Wednesday, Shehbaz Sharif said he had fervently advocated a unified approach to steer the country out of the economic challenges on a path to sustainable growth. “Employing a whole-of-the-the-government approach, the coalition government has decided to set up a Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) with a mandate to frame economic policies that ensure policy predictability, continuity and effective implementation to revive the economy”, he added.
He said by virtue of its composition, the SIFC will serve as a top decision-making forum to push through fundamental reforms in the structure of the economy. To begin with, he said the forum will focus on leveraging key sectors such as IT, agriculture, energy, minerals and mining, and defence production. “Attracting investment from friendly countries remains one of the key goals of the SIFC,” he added.
Shehbaz Sharif said the need for a representative forum like the SIFC has long been felt, given the scale of the economic challenges caused by internal and external factors.