“Made in Pakistan” culture to be nurtured to boost exports: Abdul Razzaq Daud

ISLAMABAD, Oct 3 (APP):Advisor to Prime Minister on Commerce, Industries, and Investment, Abdul Razzaq Daud Wednesday said that the government was focusing on promoting “Made in Pakistan” culture to foster the country’s export and minimize the trade deficit.
For this purpose, he said level playing field to all Pakistani industrialists and businessmen would be provided along with the foreigners.
He was speaking in Senate Standing Committee on Industries held here with Senator Ahmed Khan in the chair.
The Advisor said the country’s trade deficit was increasing every day mainly due to
de-industrialization as the industries were being closed down owing to ill-planning of the previous governments.
The previous governments did not planned seriously to promote exports and industrialization.
They only focused on collection revenues by increasing duties on import and export of goods without any planning and vision.
He said due to influx of imported items in the country, the import culture has been nurtured due to which exports kept on declining.
With increase in imports, only few traders along with their few workers get benefit while by promoting culture of exports, more industries will be established in which thousands of workers get job opportunities as well.
He said with the establishment of export oriented industries, not only exports of the country will increase and trade deficit will decrease but revenue will also increase.
The PM’s Advisor said in the supplementary budget, the government has reversed the duty regime by decreasing duties on import of raw material and increasing duties on import of finished items to boost country’s exports.
Regarding trade gap with China, Mr Daud said at present Pakistan imports goods worth of over US $15 billion while its export stands at only $1.5 billion which creates huge gap of trade between the two countries.
“We are in contact with the Chinese authorities to resolve this issue and asked them to buy at least $2 billion worth of goods from Pakistan during current fiscal year,” he added.
He informed that in this regard a delegation of Chinese traders was visiting Pakistan on October 8.
“Chinese have been very positive and they are helping us to bridge the trade gap”, he added.
He said the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China signed around three years ago was also not in the favor of Pakistan which needed to be changed.
“We have prepared a list of 330 tariff lines and will demand the Chinese side to give us benefit in these tariff lines.”
He informed that in order to rationalize the country’s tariff structure, the government was preparing a National Tariff Policy in consultation with all the concerned stakeholders including businessmen and industrialists and would be announced by June next year.
Daud said that in order to increase exports of the country, the government was focusing on promoting engineering, chemicals, Information Technology, and agriculture sector along with conventional textile and leather sectors.
He said he met with rice exporters who were demanding support from the government to double the exports of rice from existing $2 billion to $4 billion.
“We will fully support such sectors where there is a potential of drastic increase in exports.”
Senator Kalsoom Parveen said that thousands of people were loosing their jobs working in different outlets of Utility Stores Corporation (USC) due to government’s decision of not procure goods any more.
Daud said that he ordered USC to stop further procurement due to a number of issues in the corporation but this decision was temporary only to streamline the issues of the corporation and once the issues are resolved the procurement would be resumed.
He said although the government has plan to close down around 1700 non-functional utility stores out of 5000 outlets across the country, but no one would loose job in the USC as workers from the closed stores would be adjusted in other stores.
The meeting was also attended by Senators Naseebullah Bazai, Kalsoom Parveen, Anwar Lal Dean, Keshoo Bai, and Sitara Ayaz.