The widening gap between imports and exports is detrimental to the national economy and government must take immediate and necessary measures to curtail the unnecessary imports by encouraging their local substitutes, said Shabbir Hussain Chawla President Faisalabad Chamber Of Commerce & Industry (FCCI).
Addressing a meeting, he said that our imports have soared to USD53.02 billion where as the exports have fallen to USD20.4 billion. He said that the gap between imports and exports has crossed the limit of USD32 billion and in this state we would not be able to achieve our ultimate economic targets of progress and prosperity. He further said that predominantly Pakistan is an agrarian country but it is very disturbing that the production of cotton crop has reduced from 13 million bales to 10 million bales. He further told that Pakistan is actually a blessed country and has nine different ecological zones in which we could cultivate all types of exotic and high value fruits, vegetables, cereals, pulses and spices etc. He lamented that despite of the inherent edge, we are importing a large quantity of edible oil, tea and other agricultural commodities. He said that our policy makers have totally ignored the high-value crops which are one of the major causes of rural poverty and migration from rural to urban areas.
He further said that due to ill conceived policies, the cost of production has increased manifold; even we are unable to export surplus wheat in international markets even at minimum purchase price. "Per acre yield in Pakistan is also very low as compared to the other neighboring countries," he said and added that our agriculturists as well as successive governments have failed to initiate the process of value edition in Agriculture produce. He said that government must ban or impose heavy import regulatory duties on unnecessary imports in addition to encouraging the local substitutes of the major imports. However, he requested the government to consult leading chambers including FCCI to identify the import items which are unnecessary and are liable to be subjected to regulatory duty.