Former President, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Tariq Sayeed, has suggested to the government to impose ban on import of unnecessary goods for six months.
The country could easily survive without these goods and this could prove as a short-term corrective measure to reduce imbalance of payments, which will help avoid conditionally motivated loans from IMF and other such agencies, says statement from FPCCI issued here on Monday.
The leading businessman was of the opinion that instead of promoting import liberalisation, production oriented policies should be adopted with special focus to promote Agriculture sector to save huge amount of foreign exchange.
Moreover, he also emphasised for maximising production to gain surplus and to check the influx of such imported goods, which were unnecessary and could be produced locally.
He counted several such items like import of over 1.5 billion dollars of chocolates, candies, canned juices, confectionery items and assorted fruits etc. He criticised the huge import bill of over $1.0 billion in respect of cellular phones and allied equipment, coupled with unnecessary electrical home appliances like refrigerators, Air Conditioners, ovens, accounting for over $1.5 billion.