Chairman of Regional Standing Committee of Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FPCCI) Ahmad Jawad has proposed on Thursday that FPCCI should form a think tank for dialogue, policy advocacy and lobbying to safeguard the interest of business sector. This think tank should recommend sustainable development policies on behalf of the private sector and issue official views of the FPCCI on current economic policies and situations.
"FPCCI must work on publications, knowledge papers and conduct studies on every important sector that are related with the economy and accordingly they may be furnished to the government as input for the policy documents," he said. Ahmad Jawad said that the official trade statistics indicated the deteriorating trends in external trade and continuous failure of trade policy. He said Pakistan's trade deficit had been increasing for many years now but this increase was also due to an increase in more imports than the increase in exports. The year-on-year trade deficit raised nearly 30 per cent to $7.06 billion in the first quarter of 2016-17 mainly because of falling exports coupled with a double-digit increase in imports. He said the deficit stood at $2.31bn in September, up 33.4pc from $1.73bn recorded in the corresponding month of 2015.
He said this situation was a reflection of serious economic challenges posed by energy shortage, cost of doing business and rupee devaluation. He said these chronic economic ills have always been attributed to failure of various governments. Chairman of FPCCI Regional Standing Committee said the expected role and operational status of the FPCCI should be similar to that Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce (FICCI) or US Chamber of Commerce had. He urged it had to play a key role for accelerated economic growth to fill the gap in development stages between Pakistan and its neighbouring countries.
He said although FPCCI claimed to play an active role in presenting problems of trade, industry and environment and safeguarding the interests of the private sector but practically we didn't saw concrete measures. "Moreover, there are no regional desk/ department in FPCCI such as South Asia, Central Asia, European Union and Middle East etc. All other national chambers have these departments headed by well-experienced and qualified economists. Similarly, FPCCI has no proper WTO department and agriculture desk which is also unfortunate," he lamented.
Ahmed Jawad said that now the upcoming elections of FPCCI would be held on December 30 for the period of 2017. He said the two main groups began their campaign for the wining of their candidates. He said that adjustments, point scoring is doing side by side.
"But important thing that is the road map on how we activate the FPCCI properly being an apex trade body is still missing which needs to be addressed, as FPCCI working should be different from district chambers of commerce and trade association," he urged.
It may recall here 46 Chambers of Commerce and Industry, 10 Women's Chambers of Commerce & Industry, 7 Chambers of Small Traders, 4 Joint Chambers of Commerce & Industry, 107 all Pakistan Associations, representing Industry, Trade and Service sectors are under the umbrella of FPCCI.