Federal Minister for Privatisation and Investment Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has said that no country can make economic progress without national and foreign investment. He was speaking at the annual dinner of Hyderabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry here late on Saturday night. He said the present government has introduced an investment-friendly policy, which can be judged by the fact that three years earlier foreign investment was only US $422 million which increased to $795 million next year, and last year it had further increased to 950 million dollars and this year it would surpass one billion dollars.
He said that during the past three years foreign investment has almost doubled. Similarly, the local investment has increase manifold, with the result that industrial sector has recorded an increase of 18 percent.
He said this provided job opportunities to people, which indicates that the benefits of investment are trickling down to lower levels.
Referring to agriculture sector, he said that Pakistan has harvested a bumper cotton crop of 15 million bales. The crop provided job opportunities to rural population as the crop is picked manually. Similarly, the support price of wheat has increased, which will have positive impact on rural economy.
He said economy is on the move but there are apprehensions looking back to Pakistan's economic history. He said that in 1960s economic development in Pakistan made rapid progress but unfortunately the development was not unified, as some areas remained underdeveloped. He said it was therefore imperative that unified efforts should be made to develop all areas and there should not be any regional disparity and the gap in personal income should be capped.
He said that government couldn't achieve this objective by creating 1000 or more job opportunities of 'naib qasid' unless the society fulfils its obligations and people from less developed areas come forward and invest in economic development projects.
He regretted that very influential people of Sindh visited him for personal favours, such as transfer of petty government irrigation or police officials, but no one had visited him with a project which could benefit the people of their area. He said this attitude had to be changed or "we will remain where we are".
He said that private sector should come forward to minimise the expenditure of the government so that the amount saved could be spent on production. He said the government could give a viable policy and help to achieve objective and can not spoon-feed.
Referring to privatisation he said the process of privatisation started 15 years back but remained at a snail's pace which could be gauged by the fact that during the past ten years the privatisation was of Rs 60 billion and during the three years of President Musharraf regime it was Rs 36 billion while during the past two years it has gone up to Rs 72 billion in a transparent way. He said during the privatisation "we directly approached the people by inviting application for shares."
He said that for OGDC 97000 application were received, Pakistan Petroleum 755000, for Sui Southern Gas 258000 and for Kapco 1.4 million and up till now 716,000 people have been given shares worth 23 billion. Thus the common men for the first time benefited from the privatisation process.
He said that when he was finance minister in Sindh the annual development budget of the province was 35 million, or one dollar per person. "We made efforts and succeeded to increase it four times, but that too was not sufficient." He said when the province's annual budget was Rs 25 billion the government was spending Rs 87 billion on KESC, and similarly other such organisations were running in loss due to mismanagement and were causing enormous financial burden on national exchequers. Although KESC has given Rs 15 billion support but now we had shifted it to private sector and money thus saved would be spent on health and education sectors.
He said efforts should be made to resolve major problems confronted by the people to win their confidence. He said when he was finance minister of Sindh he visited Hyderabad which could be described as nerve centre of Sindh. He asked the people as to what was their major problem and was told that sewerage and water supply was the major problem of the city. He said despite poor ADP he allocated Rs 500 million in budget to resolve the problem "but I was told that the problem was not resolved for the reason best known to those who were responsible".
Earlier, Mehmood Ahmed, President of HCCI, welcoming him pointed out that 15 percent GST impose on services and utility bills has enhanced the prices of gas, electricity and petroleum products which has negative impact on essential commodities, and demanded that it should be reduce to bring stability in prices.