"Government is committed to cope with the economic challenges and making all-out efforts to overcome the economic ills and no country could achieve the target of economic growth without due participation of the private sector." Governor Punjab Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar stated this while talking to the LCCI President Ijaz A Mumtaz at Governors House here on Monday. During a meeting, a number of issues came under discussion. LCCI Executive Committee Member Muhammad Haroon Arora was also present on the occasion.
Governor Punjab informed the LCCI president about his initiatives of providing clean and safe drinking water to the school children of Punjab. He said that availability of clean drinking has become a serious issue in the recent years in Pakistan due to the presence of life threatening biological, chemical and dissolved solids in drinking water.
"It is Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's vision to provide education and missing facilities in government schools to every child and Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif is implementing this vision in Punjab," Sarwar said.
LCCI President Ijaz A Mumtaz lauded the Governor's efforts for provision of clean drinking water to the masses. He also lauded the Governor's efforts to get GSP Plus status for Pakistan. He stressed upon the need to make target oriented efforts to attract the much-needed foreign investment in the country. He said that foreign investment in power sector would help government to get rid of the ongoing severe energy crisis that has jolted the industrial sector.
He said that institutional fragility and the political instability were the major factors keeping the foreign investors away. There is a dire need to promote economic vitality by strengthening private sector as internal dynamism has faded away due to acute energy shortage, deteriorating law and order and political instability. The LCCI president said that rising risk perception about investing into Pakistan is hitting hard the entire economy and needs to be tackled through a new policy approach by involving Chambers of Commerce in the country. Mumtaz further said that in the recent past, fall in Foreign Direct Investment has adversely affected the country's economic growth.