Sultan Ahmed Chawla, President, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (PFCCI) while addressing large number of business community at FPCCI Islamabad Office said unity and solidarity in business community was the need of the hour to strive for resolving their problems and to pull the economy out of prevailing difficulties.
He said FPCCI Islamabad Office would be made a centre for promotion of R&D activities to improve the performance of trade and industry. He lauded the efforts of Tariq Saeed, Business Panel Group and ICCI Founder Group and assured that he would try his best to perform up to the expectations of business community.
President PFCCI said lawyers movement had proved that every goal could be achieved with unity and stressed upon the businessmen to launch concerted efforts for achieving their desired goals.
In his welcome address, Mian Akram Farid, FPCCI Chief Capital Office, Islamabad highlighted business community problems and said load-shedding was badly hurting the trade and industry as without sustainable power supply they could not perform up to their potential. He said one-one year moratorium given to textile industry on payment of principal amount, should be given to all industries as they were finding it hard to retire their obligations in an environment of unabated gas and power outages and cut-throat competition.
He said prevailing law and order situation was scaring away the local and foreign investors and government should take all possible steps to improve law and order situation. He said imposition of 25 percent regulatory duty on export of steel products to Afghanistan had not achieved desired results and government should remove this duty to improve exports of steel industry. He assured Sultan Ahmed Chawla that he would utilise his all energies to discharge the responsibilities assigned to him by FPCCI.-PR