Talking to a delegation of leading industrialists and businessmen at the Prime Minister's House the other day, Shaukat Aziz offered some sane advice to accelerate the pace of development in the country. The large-scale business needs to embark on corporatisation to meet global challenges and flourish in the increasingly competitive environment.
For promoting corporate culture, it was essential to professionalise business practices and policies and develop human skills. Apart from value added manufacturing, the business community should explore the huge potential of investment in agri-business, engineering, tourism and IT and telecom sectors.
The government, on its part, was committed to providing enabling environment to the private sector so that it could play its role as the engine of growth, privatisation, deregulation and liberalisation being the three pillars of government's economic policy.
Providing a level playing field to all the businesses and the attainment of balanced growth were the guiding principles of the government's economic strategy.
The members of the business delegation appreciated the economic policies of the government which facilitated investment and healthy growth in profitability, but stressed the need to ease and simplify the creation of holding companies and group accounts.
To unleash the true potential of the private sector, the government was also urged to reduce inspection requirements.
The meeting between the Prime Minister and the business community, in our view, was important for a number of reasons. It allowed Shaukat Aziz to spell out, more clearly and forcefully, government's economic policies which would help the industrialists to make investment decisions on a longer-term basis.
At the same time, some of the concerns of the business community conveyed at the highest level would now stand a better chance to be redressed if found reasonable.
However, we would urge the government not to solely rely on such inter-action but make a bold effort to remove the real bottlenecks which are still holding back investment and not allowing the country to realise its full potential and attain maximise growth. Some of the factors hindering domestic and foreign investment are quite obvious.
Our infrastructure is definitely inadequate, weak or underdeveloped. Rails and roads, for instance, cannot meet the modern-day requirements. Utilities like electricity are expensive and unreliable. Land prices are too high for the investors. At times, titles of land are disputed and can be a source of litigation over a long time.
Labour laws are outdated and there is no real progress to reform them despite government promises at various levels. Most of the old industrial estates and zones, advertised as harbingers of foreign investment and technology, now give a pathetic look.
The law and order situation is not satisfactory as yet. Another unique problem with the country is that nobody knows who is the real incharge. The President announces a certain decision which at times is reversed due to pressure from some other quarters.
The dialogue with India seems to have hit some snags and its success now appears to be less assured. In short, while there is no doubt about the intentions of the Prime Minister, we would advise his government to remove the many bottlenecks which are still very much there and could frustrate his plans to foster investment and thus jeopardise the prospects of a better standard of living for the common people.