-Transfer of technology in SEZs
By Asad Cheema
ISLAMABAD:The Advisor to Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment, Abdul Razak Dawood has said the government was prioritizing development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) for attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and transfer of technology into the country.
“The SEZs are primarily focused on industrialization that result in export promotion, import substitution, transfer of technologies and employment generation, which are the primary targets of our government as well,†Abdul Razak Dawood stated.
The advisor said the establishment of SEZs was critical to resolving Balance of Payment Issues as †we tend to give priority to enterprises which are involved in export generation or import substitution†he said.
Talking about the criteria, the advisor said that only those economic zones are given status of SEZ which are successful in export generation and import substitution while at zone enterprise level, the admission into an SEZ is based on the economic viability of the business proposal.
Razak Dawood said this economic viability was gauged through the expected employment generation, domestic raw material consumption, imported raw material, and local and imported machinery at the time of consideration of the zone entry application.
He said as more and more zone enterprises are coming into production the monitoring of these commitments has become indispensable, informing that instead of leaving it up to the developers or SEZs for that matter, the SEZ Secretariat at BOI was working to not only consolidate the data for gauging the actual benefits at zone enterprise level. He added that the BOI was also working towards amendments in the SEZ Act 2012 to streamlines these objectives and provide a conducive environment for the enterprises to meet these objectives.
Replying to question on changes expected in SEZ Act and rules, he said the SEZ Act in its current form could not effectively contribute towards industrialization of Pakistan in its true spirit due to some inherent shortcomings, like slow pace of development and lack of utilities in the SEZs, complicated approval process, cumbersome procedures for availing the incentives, lack of clear policy objectives, absence of one window operations and others. The advisor said the proposed amendments aim to cater for the government’s vision to promote the entire Service Sector such as knowledgeand Information Technology (IT) SEZs, tourism ,:including faith, health, cultural, and geographic etc, through Integrated Tourism Zones.
He further said that considering that regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles pose the biggest challenge to Industrialization, One Stop Services Act is proposed to be promulgated to ensure the requisite Ease of Doing Business and to provide quality
services to the investors with legal backing. Razak Dawood said that with digital world becoming a reality, the SEZs are to be transformed to meet the challenge and create space for IT SEZs.
