Economy growing in spite of trade deficit: CBR chairman

Economy is growing in spite of trade deficit, however, exporters have to overcome their inherent weaknesses and deficiencies to face the future challenges and survive in the competitive international markets, said Central Board of Revenue (CBR) Chairman Abdullah Yousuf.
He was addressing the exporters and businessmen in the conference ball of Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) here on Tuesday. He said our economy had successfully absorbed the repeated crisis, fomented by record increase in oil prices coupled with shocking earthquake of October 8. "It would be difficult for us to survive with previous fragile economy," he added.
The chairman said that exports were only solution to overcome trade deficit and asked the exporters to play their role in increasing national exports, adding that first of all exporters should overcome their own weaknesses and deficiencies to survive in the international markets.
Abdullah Yusuf said we had potential to double our textile exports from existing 10 billion dollars to 20 billion dollars and in this connection private and public sector had to move ahead with unanimity of purpose.
He said we needed local and foreign investment to increase our production capabilities, and added that government was already making efforts to facilitate the exporters and investors.
He further said that we had some difficulties in facing challenges of quota -free regime, however, time had come to take bold steps to produce quality products with lowest possible production cost. In this connection, he particularly mentioned Human Resource, weaknesses of labour deficiency of technology management failure, high logistic cost and many other factors to become cost effective.
The second option would be merger of various organisations to survive economically in this world, he said, adding we must work hard with a futuristic vision to remain competitive and to arrest poverty and unemployment.
He said exports in Pakistan had already been declared zero-rated and old pending sales tax cases were being resolved on top priority basis. Responding to a question, the CBR chairman said that some proposals had been received to replace some pre-emptive with actual taxes, however, no final decision had yet been taken.
Earlier, PTEA Chairman Zahid Aslam in his address of welcome explained in detail the problem being confronted by the exporters. Later, Faisalabad Industrial Estate Development and Management Company Chairman Mian Muhammad Latif presented a shield to the chairman.