Economy Linked To Agriculture, Research

There is a need to focus on agriculture and research to strengthen Pakistan on the economic front and to meet the requirements of the exporting sectors to increase the country’s exports.

These views were expressed by the experts in Jang Economic Session on ‘What should be the strategy to increase the exports’, here on Monday. The panellists were Dr Qais Aslam, Irfan Qaiser Sheikh, Jamshed Iqbal Cheema, Ibaad-ur-Rehman, Mehmood Ahmed, Imtiaz Ahmed and Zafar Mehmood while hosted by Sikandar Lodhi.

Dr Qais Aslam said strong exporting sector was vital for the economic growth of any country. He said textile was the leading exporting sector of Pakistan but contributed only two percent to GDP. He believed that transformation should be made in accordance with the world markets demand. He called for focusing agriculture sector to increase food export. He suggested for searching the new markets for Pakistani products.

Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said value addition was not being done in Pakistan as country exporting rice, leather, and cotton without value addition while Korea, Singapore and many other countries progressed due to the value addition. He said the value addition of agriculture sector produces was virtually ignored which was unfortunate. He called for the imposition of ban on the export of raw material to double the export and employment generation.

Jamshed Iqbal Cheema said Pakistan was self-sufficient in sugar, rice, cotton, auto parts and other industry and raw material for industry was supplied by the agriculture sector. He called for reducing the cost of input for both agriculture and industrial sectors. He said research was ignored in Pakistan while reforms for the SME sector development were unavoidable.

Ibaad-ur-Rehman said improvement in industrial system was important to increase the export. He demanded investment in agriculture sector to increase export and focusing on food processing industry.

Mehmood Ahmed said rebate and refund culture should be discouraged as this was a corrupt system. He called for subsidy system to increase export and said the exporters were disturbed with multiple taxes on them. He demanded reduction in taxes for export growth. Imtiaz Ahmed said energy crisis was hampering the export growth while promotion of trade and export was crucial for the economic growth.

He said appreciation in rupee value against the US dollar misbalanced the export sector and the textile sector was in trouble. He called for tapping the unconventional markets and agriculture sector had potential to reach those untapped markets. He said the stakeholders especially ministry of commerce should focus on it and focus on trade with China. He said production of quality product was important for image building of Pakistan in world market.

Zafar Mehmood said Pakistan was lacking behind in research for export of the country while the government had also ignored it.He said the government should include small traders and manufacturers in export promoting activities as they could not afford the expenses.

Source : thenews.com.pk