The Finance Ministry will reimburse the entire collection from the Export Development Surcharge to the Export Development Fund (EDF). The ministry earlier had provided only 50 percent of total collections to the EDF, which is presently Rs 1.4 billion. This was stated by Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar, while addressing a press conference at the Federation House on Friday. He said that an amendment to this effect was presently before the National Assembly for approval.
He said that the Ministry had enlarged the EDF Board giving more representation to FPCCI and chambers and associations. The membership would be rotated every year to give representation to other associations.
There is a panel to consider requests from trade bodies for establishing technical training centres and testing laboratories, the minister said, adding that he had no knowledge of cases of misappropriation of funds allocated from the EDF 20 to 25 years ago. However, he had directed for carrying out a performance audit of the funds released from the EDF.
With regard to signing of free trade agreements with China and India the minister said that study groups had been set up for the purpose and negotiations for FTAs would be initiated after the groups submit their reports. "However, we have identified our reservations to the Indian request for giving it the MFN status, and progress on trade was linked with the progress on political front.
Humayun said that there was no chance of providing any relief in petrol prices or electricity charges to exporters to reduce their cost of production. He said that exporters in other countries were facing the same increase in petrol prices. The government is encouraging conversion of power generation from oil to gas, coal and hydel power which might provide relief to the consumers in future. The minister said that the government had made the criteria stricter for selection of commercial officers in Pakistan's missions abroad and those showing unsatisfactory performance would be recalled after two years. He said that Kenya had promised that it would raise the issue of duty on import of Pakistani rice with the African Union because the problem has endangered Kenyan foreign trade.