ISLAMABAD, Nov 15 (APP): Federal Minister for Commerce and Industries, Dr. Gohar Ejaz,on Wednesday said that the government is running the country’s industries at 100% productivity and trying to enhance the exports upto $36 billion.
Now the remittances in the country are $22 billion and exports are $27 billion and the country’s needs to increase regional trade for economic development, he said this while addressing the session of Margalla Dialogue on “Economic frontiers and entrepreneurial vision,”.
The Minister said that it’s time for Pakistan to stress on exports, and stop paying for deficits accumulated for faulty policies.
He said that the $20 billion per annum current account deficit is a trauma, to say the least.
Dr Gohar Ejaz regretted that Pakistan should have had around $100 billion exports by today, whereas we are lingering with hardly $27 billion.
He pointed out that world trade is $800 billion, and Pakistan’s share should have been around 7 percent. He said that India and Bangladesh took our share as they leaped forward with right policies and invested in buoying exports in their industrial infrastructure.
The minister said the problem is that we never believed in industrialisation, and preferred ad hocism over it.
“Our stock capital and exports are less than $27 billion. Our exports are somewhere near $27.5 billion, whereas in the decade of 2000s, they stood at $10 billion,” he remarked.
Gohar said textiles exports are less than $3 billion, and synthetic fabric is 30 million, whereas Afghanistan has over $3 billion.
He advised that Pakistan should go into exports by creating brands and start believing in domestic consumption.
The minister said that time for reliance on gold is of yesteryears, and observed that Pakistan has rich potential in gemstones and minerals, and the same must be tapped.
He regretted that Pakistan does not have even a single company of billion dollars, because “we don’t make them grow and prosper domestically.”
He talked about the scarcity of dollars when he assumed his ministry, and said that it was all owing to external factors that manipulated the lacunas in our policies.
He also said that 22 percent of interest rate is unexplainable, and will not lead to any growth in real sense.
He talked about the Afghan Transit Trade and said that it was a trap that had bled the economy. He praised the policy of cracking down on illicit trade across the western borders which used to render a loss of $6 billion.
