Export facilitation centre opened at Lahore Chamber: Razak assures support for exports enhancement

LAHORE: Advisor to Prime Minister for Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood on Saturday assured full support to the exporters and exports enhancement.

Abdul Razak Dawood was speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry. He also inaugurated the export facilitation center at LCCI and hoped that LCCI export facilitation center will contribute in enhancing exports and will provide services to the exporters.

He also said the government will safeguard the interests of local IT industry by not signing the ITA (Information Technology Agreement).

"We need to shift from low value added products to high end manufacturing and moving from import to strengthen the manufacturing sector should be our way forward."

He said that along with goods exports, Pakistan needs to increase exports of services. He said that the government has abolished import duties on 41 percent industrial raw materials which are more than 1600 tariff lines. He said the Ministry of Commerce is working on a three-year plan to rationalize tariff, especially the duties on raw materials. The plan would be finalized in consultation with chambers and associations and will encourage value addition.

The Advisor said the Ministry of Commerce is also working on making the process of getting Refunds easier for the exporters, he added that the function of setting tariff is now being done by Ministry of Commerce which was previously being determined by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).

He said that land acquisition for SEZs become costly as soon as we announce the development on any site, to counter this issue we have suggested to bring a lease policy so that the land in SEZs would be available on lease basis. Speaking on the occasion LCCI President Irfan Iqbal Sheikh said the retail sector has incurred lot of costs and efforts on the development of infrastructure for integration with the FBR's computerized system for real time reporting.

However, the benefit of reduced rate of sales tax (from 14-12 percent) is being provided to limited sectors (i.e. finished fabric, textile and textile made-ups and leather and artificial leather related products).

LCCI recommends that all the sub sectors of retail sectors should benefit from the reduced rate of 12 percent. He suggested that no audit should be conducted for at least 2 years for such retailers who opt for integration under this regime.

He said Pakistan's export products are heavily concentrated in textiles, leather and few other items. There is a need to diversify our exports, especially focusing on potential sectors like Halal Food, Information Technology, Engineering Industry, Surgical Instruments, Sport Goods and Pharmaceuticals etc. He also mentioned the export potential of IT sector, saying that Pakistan has presence of over 5,000 IT companies and call centres and a sufficient number of IT professionals who are also good in spoken English while every year almost 20,000 IT graduates are being produced at national level.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020