Under an EU-funded Trade Related Technical Assistance (TRTA II) programme, a seminar on Public Private Dialogue (PPD) on services development took place here on Thursday, which was attended by a large numbers of participants from public and private sectors as well as civil society. The purpose of the seminar was to define policy recommendations on domestic regulatory reform for the development of services trade in Pakistan.
Pierre Mayaudon, acting Ambassador of the European Union to Pakistan, emphasised that the EU was standing by Pakistan side in its endeavours to develop its services sector, both at home and abroad. To translate this commitment into practical terms, the Euros10 Million TRTA II program allows promoting trade policy capacity building.
As reflected during the seminar, a focus has been put on three sectors: transport services, computer related services and professional services. These are critical areas where accessing international standards in a competitive regional environment is key to sustaining the economic growth of Pakistan. The Additional Secretary Commerce, Shahid Rahim Sheikh, commended the initiative of the TRTA II programme and expressed the desire and willingness of the Ministry of Commerce to focus attention on the development and promotion of Trade in Services. He maintained that after the devolution of various federal government ministries dealing with services, there is need to augment services trade and develop concrete policies and institutional mechanism for services sector promotion and exports.
Open house discussions among the invited participants also took place in which representative of Federal Government Ministries, implementing agencies, provincial departments, Chambers of Commerce, trade associations, individual firms, independent research organisations and a cademia discussed the issues being faced by the selected services sectors and possible policy reform to overcome them.-PR
Comments
Comments are closed.