Despite lavish spending, Domestic Commerce Wing of Ministry of Commerce has failed to achieve the targets set to boost the exports even after passing of one year due to weak management system, Business Recorder has learnt. Domestic Commerce Wing started working in January 2009 and government had set Rs 36.336 million two years' allocation for the wing.
As per PC-I, the main objective for creation of Domestic Commerce Wing in the Ministry of Commerce was to carry out review and implement the recommendations of those consultants who had conducted ten research studies on, Protection, Competitiveness, Subsidies and Incentive Regime, Retail and Wholesale Markets, Real estate, Storage & warehousing, Transport, Domestic commerce survey and the State of Market regulation in Pakistan, with a view to boost the exports in the international markets.
Sources revealed to the Business Recorder that government had spent Rs 50 million on foreign consultants who conducted these studies in 2007. Domestic commerce wing was created to review and implement these studies but no progress had been made even after one year despite million of rupees spending to retain the domestic commerce wing.
The Ministry of Commerce recruited a Domestic Commerce Advisor (DCA) and Domestic Commerce Specialist (DCS) with a salary packages of Rs 200,000 per month and Rs 150,000 per month, respectively. Sources said that the Advisor was taken from National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Specialist was from textile sector.
The Advisor has already been engaged with NAB assignments and specialist does not know how to handle research studies because he was alien to research techniques," sources attributed to the reasons of failure of wing created for review of research studies. Half of the project time has lapsed, but still the contribution by the heads of the projects is ambiguous and their one-year contract is going to expire at the end of December 2009.
"They have been pursuing for the extension of their contracts for the next year but the former Secretary Commerce, Suleman Ghani had refused to extend the contracts of Advisor and Specialist," sources said adding that now they are trying to get extension from newly appointed Secretary Commerce, Zafar Mahmood. "They are wasting financial resources and enjoying perks and privileges without doing anything for the domestic commerce sector to boost exports," sources said.
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