The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Board of Investment (BoI) jointly organised a stakeholder consultation on special economic zones (SEZs) development in Pakistan. The consultation workshop held with the support of United Kingdom's Department for International Development on February 19, 2019 in Islamabad and attended by over 80 key officials from the federal and provincial governments, academia and private sector, discussed the roadmap for fast-track and evidence-based SEZs development, says a press release issued here on Wednesday.
Secretary BoI, Sardar Ahmad Nawaz Sukhera while opening the consultation highlighted the new approach for SEZs development in Pakistan, which has been envisioned during the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) meeting held on February 4, 2019 including clarifying the role of federation and provincial governments for more effective SEZs development in Pakistan.
He stated that BoI is fully committed to fast-track the SEZs approval process time from 90 days to 45 days. ADB's Country Director for Pakistan, Xiaohong Yang, in her remarks underscored the critical need to clear up misunderstanding surrounding SEZs development, assess SEZs progress so far and discuss on how to move forward for a more targeted and synchronized approach. She emphasized that CPEC and CAREC are in full swing that make the need for SEZs as part of economic corridor development paramount in Pakistan, to transform these mainly road corridors into true economic corridors to revive, diversify and sustain the export oriented manufacturing sector to generate jobs and prosperity for all.
The economic corridors are needed to fully realize Pakistan's geo-political location advantage to become an economic hub of the Central, South and West Asian countries to be part of global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs). She also highlighted that this is the right time for Pakistan to develop SEZs properly to transform the economy into a dynamic, vibrant, and integrated production system and market with strong regional and global linkages and ADB stands ready to help.
Principal Economist ADB, Guntur Sugiyarto presented the SEZs development framework for Pakistan, which has been prepared based on global best practice, Chinese experience and local knowledge to ensure that the framework is really relevant for Pakistanto.
He also highlighted that Pakistan must develop evidence based SEZs on this framework given the high failure globally including 77% in China. SEZs are a complex business and if Pakistan fails to develop successful SEZs, it will be very costly and will haunt the overall development progress in the country.
The presenters, panelists and participants emphasized on the need of revamping of the SEZ Act to ensure a well-coordinated approach between and within various federal and provincial governments, given the cross cutting nature of SEZs.
They also lauded the Government of Pakistan's decision to prioritize SEZs development and urged all stakeholders to synchronise their efforts to ensure SEZs development success in the country. It was agreed that successful SEZs will enhance overall economic connectivity, integration and competitiveness, as well as investment, exports and productivity, which are keys for the revitalisation of the economy, fiscal consolidation, 2 million annual jobs creation and poverty alleviation.
Going forward, the ADB will continue to work closely with the government and the other key stakeholders to streamline and strengthen the SEZ Act as well as apply its SEZs development framework to appraise and benchmark the performance of selected SEZs planned under the CPEC and beyond as needed, to prepare detailed action plans including SEZs development strategies for the government to ensure SEZs are a success in Pakistan.-PR
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