ISLAMABAD: The Engineering Development Board (EDB) started budget exercise and has formed several sect oral committees on engineering and allied sectors to provide proposals for the upcoming budget of fiscal year 2011- 12. A separate committee on auto sector has also been constituted, having members of sub-committee of Auto Industry Development Committee (AIDC) on Fiscal Issues and Indigenization.

These committees will finalize the budget proposals related to their sector, which would be consolidated and examined for discussion in the final meeting scheduled on the third week of next month. The final tariff proposals will be forwarded to the concerned quarters by the end of next month, said EDB press statement.

These committees include prominent experts, manufacturers, consumers and representatives from Ministry of Industries and Production, Commerce, Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the tariff experts of the relevant fields. Each committee is headed by an experienced and renowned industrialist as its convener and an officer of the Board as Coordinator.

Several invitations for budget proposals have also been sent to industrial stakeholders, associations, chambers, manufacturers of engineering and allied products and consumers of such product through mail. The committees are assigned to redress the tariff and other related issues of concerned sector affecting their competitiveness, further expansion and entrance into global market. The board has placed the information regarding constitution of committees, their term of References (TORs) guiding principle, list of active SROs on its website.