The business community of Southern Punjab had urged upon the government to review all counter-productive free trade agreements which are against the national interests but nobody was blamed yet and satisfactory steps were not taken to fix the issue. President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI) Fareed Mughis Sheikh pointed towards structural weaknesses, policy hiccups, high transaction cost, lack of infrastructure, and improper mechanism to safeguard local export industry as many sectors were at the mercy of international market.
He also expressed concern over continued fall in exports and said that exports had slipped from 25.3 billion in 2011 to 22 billion in 2015 which showed a drop of three percent in comparison to the GDP. He said that fall in exports could be attributed primarily to its non-competent department, decade-long energy crisis, rising cost of production, political uncertainty, ignoring value-addition and preferring export of raw material, and inability to capitalise on GSP Plus.
He noted that non-payment of refunds had damaged the competitiveness of export sector and pushed up cost of doing business at a time when cost of production in Bangladesh, Indian and Vietnam was less than Pakistan due to cheap electricity. Fareed said that country used to spend 11.3 percent of the GDP on debt servicing in 2008 which had now swelled to 19.1 percent due to unprecedented loans.
"Our investment laws are very liberal but not helping as more and more investors continue to prefer trading over manufacturing which doesn't require heavy investment and space," Fareed sheikh added. The rise of stock market, commodity market and land market also reduced interest in manufacturing sector while there was no bank in the country to support industrial sector, he observed. "Commercial banks continue to prefer investment in government papers and avoid industrial sector," he added.
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