The number of inspecting agencies, its unending and unscheduled visits to industries, harassing attitude towards investors and high industrial input cost need to be curtailed to encourage local investment, said LCCI President Mian Anjum Nisar.
While talking to a three-member fact-finding World Bank mission of the Foreign Investment Advisory Service, Anjum Nisar said that high utility charges, unlimited Afghan transit trade, smuggling, under-invoicing coupled with duplicity of tax and high taxation rates, were the major irritants that are making the lives of the businessmen miserable.
'Our taxation system needs a complete overhauling, making it a resource generating rather than a resource-collecting tool,' he observed.
Jean Paul Gauthier, the leader of the delegation and the Manager Bearing Point - formerly KPMG Company Inc, said that his mission would soon launch a survey of 600 industrial enterprises to ascertain critical administrative barriers that industrialists have to overcome to run their organisations.
He agreed with the LCCI assertion that the microeconomic indicators were extremely healthy for direct foreign investment.
Despite huge opportunities, strong market demand with meagre competition, local and foreign investors are scary of making investment here because of the geo-political instability, he added.
He felt the need for strengthening micro-economic institutions to produce robust investment climate.
He was also accompanied by Fatima Zohra Shah a private sector development analyst of the World Bank rapid unit and Sheri A. Ptigala a senior consultant of the Bearing Point.
The Bearing Point would launch a survey and hold a series of workshops in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, to formulate recommendations and solutions to administrative barriers in Pakistan that would provide basis for future lending and grant portfolios by the World Bank and the USA.
The Vice President Shahzad Ali Malik, executive committee members Khalid Rafiq and Sohail Lashari were also present on the occasion.
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