President Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) Zahid Latif Malik has urged the government to take bold step for setting up a high powered "Export Monitoring Committee" to keep an account of policies formulation and their implementation. The proposed committee should also identify the problems related to the export and recommend remedial measures and solutions for overcoming the issues he added.
He also urged upon the government to take drastic step for setting up of sector specific Export Promotion Councils in the country. The proposed councils should be established for all the export sectors to enhance their exports and these councils should work under Commerce Ministry for the betterment of export industry he added.
Talking to Business Recorder on Sunday SCCI President said that keeping in view fast changing business trends globally a new concept of Shared Showrooms has been introduced in various countries. He suggested that Shared Showrooms and display centres in potential markets should also be set up for providing opportunities to exporters to showcase their products with proper marketing facilities.
The shared showrooms offer solution to the issue of high cost of maintaining and individual showrooms in a foreign country and difficult to administering it from another country he said. The SCCI President further stated that shared showrooms is the cheapest way to always have samples available for the demonstration in another country with the facility of trained staff to market the products to the buyers visiting facility. He was of the opinion that such marketing strategy will give an opportunity to Pakistan to step ahead of its competitors and take "Made in Pakistan" branding to another level and ensure increase exports.
Zahid said SCCI can offer significant help to the concerned high ups in identifying such shared showrooms. For development of export sector and to turn around the declining trend of export it is imperative for the government to devise a sound sector specific strategy and a vision with defined objectives for achieving the positive results.
In order to achieve the positive results he said that it is important that high priority sectors and potential sectors should also be identified depending on level of production and supply, potential contribution to exports, demand in international market and capacity to contribute towards the economic development of the country.
The SCCI President further added that government should provide special incentives to encourage the export of high priority sectors like textile and clothing, surgical and dental instruments, leather products, sports goods, footwear, gems and jewellery and furniture. Similarly potential sectors like surgical implants, composite products, light engineering products, printing and packing, sports wear, fitness apparel, gloves and musical instruments etc, needed special focus and facilities to perform optimally, he added.