ISLAMABAD: Business leaders and industrialists stressed the need to reduce fiscal deficit, boost exports and rationalize power tariffs for promotion of business and industry in Pakistan.
Iftikhar Ali Malik, President of SAARC CCI told INP-WealthPK that the Government of Pakistan had performed well on the economic front, despite facing challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, rising trends in the international petroleum market, and high inflation. He called for rationalising power tariffs to support the business community and to boost industrial production for exports.
Talking to WealthPK, Mian Kashif Ashfaq, President of UK-Pakistan Business Council and Chairman of Pakistan Furniture Council, also appreciated the government’s economic performance.
He suggested that more steps should be taken to support the business community and industrialists, reduce the cost of doing business and attract a good number of foreign investors to create job opportunities in the country. He also called for rationalizing power tariffs to achieve these objectives.
Talking to WealthPK, Mehr Kashif Younis, former senior vice president of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, appreciated the government’s performance highlighted in the Economic Survey and suggested that extra measures should be taken to create a friendly environment for both domestic and foreign investors to achieve the socio-economic prosperity of the country.
Business leaders and industrialists also called for expediting work on different projects under the CPEC to promote industrialization in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) across the country.
Meanwhile, the Economic Survey 2021-22 said the governments and central bank are taking accommodative fiscal and monetary policy measures to protect the people from an economic meltdown.
The survey said an unprecedented global crisis caused by the Covid-19 outbreak in early 2020 led to equally unprecedented worldwide measures to protect lives and likelihoods.
“The imposed mobility and other necessary restrictive measures took a huge toll on social and economic prosperity’’, the survey said. It further said that recession in 2020 could not be avoided due to suspension of economic activities and resultant negative growth.
The survey further said that vaccination programs in 2021, though unevenly spread among world regions, allowed gradual relaxation of the economic restrictions. Meantime, economic policies continued to support a strong economic revival across the globe and therefore economic growth exceeded potential output growth in 2021. It further said the supply-demand imbalances were exacerbated by supply chain disruption and bottlenecks in the transport sector. –INP
