Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) President Almas Hyder on Wednesday called for representation of private sector in policy making to ensure immediate treatment to the economic issues. The LCCI President in a statement said that being most important stakeholder, private sector must have representation in policy making teams that will be equally beneficial for the government and private sector.
The business community has a great combination of fertile ideas both for businesses and economy but these cannot be decoded until and unless private sector has representation at the supreme forums, he said.
Almas Hyder said the government should make necessary legislation in this regard as health of economic indicators is not good at the moment. The health of leading economic indicators including ease of doing business, manufacturing, stock market, gross domestic product, income & expenditure, unemployment rate, consumer price index, currency strength, availability of energy, debts, balance of trade and foreign exchange reserves is not good and needs immediate treatment as these are directly linked to the economic prosperity and also to the foreign investors' sentiments, he added.
"If these indicators are healthy, these would attract huge foreign direct investment, build the confidence of local investors, increase remittances and turn the country into hub of manufacturing and economic activities," he added. He said the manufacturing activities influence the GDP that results in increase state revenue besides generating employment. He said that industrial production growth rate averaged 5.32 percent from 1990 to 2018. The government should facilitate manufacturing sector and resolve its major obstacles like availability of cheap energy and early refunds to achieve the target of highest growth rate, he asserted.
Almas Hyder said that start-up in Pakistan is a hard task and this issue should be tackled through one-window operation to reduce the interference of various government departments in this process. Pakistan is ranked at 136 among 190 economies in the ease of doing business. He said that cost of doing business is one of the major impediments hampering growth of all sectors of the economy whether it is manufacturing or agriculture.
The LCCI President also demanded attractive incentives for the overseas Pakistanis who are playing key role in economic uplift of the country through their remittances. He said the government should take measures to ensure that these remittances are invested in productive sectors instead of wasting them to consumption or loss-making public sector enterprises.
He said that foreign remittances could easily reach $40-50 billion in the next few years if the government announces incentives on the investment made by expatriate Pakistanis. He said the government should encourage the expats to invest in the sectors like energy, agriculture, telecommunication and information technology.