ISLAMABAD – President Asif Ali Zardari asked the country’s leading business houses to convene a roundtable conference of all political parties on their platform to find ways and means of putting the country’s economy on a solid footing. At a presentation by the Pakistan Business Council on the agenda for the economic reforms, the president also suggested to the businessmen to make consortiums of leading entrepreneurs to consider buying out and managing various state-run enterprises.
However, he said, consortiums should only be of local entrepreneurs so that the assets and equity remained in the hands of Pakistani nationals. The president offered the Presidency as the venue of the roundtable meeting of the political parties, adding that he would participate in it as the PPP co-chairman along with leaders of other political parties. Discussing the current economic situation, Zardari said it was a collective responsibility to work together to overcome the challenges of the current economic situation and to put the economy back on track.
He said investors, entrepreneurs and businessmen were important stakeholders and they must come forward to play their role. “If the important stakeholder don’t step in now to assist the government in taking remedial measures and addressing economic issues, the economic situation will affect the business community the most,” the president warned.
He said ensuring continuity of economic policies and taking along all political parties was necessary to ensure sustained economic growth, adding that “had the business community owned the energy policy in the mid-90s and stood against the reversal when the PPP government was undemocratically removed from office, we would not have been facing the present energy crisis”, he remarked.
Talking about the ownership of policies, Zardari said if Pakistan’s business community took ownership of the economic policies and played a proactive role, no international agency would be able to dictate Pakistan in the economic sphere.
Federal ministers Amin Fahim, Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Mir Hazar Khan Bijrani, Naveed Qamar and Nadeemul Haq as well as Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwala were also present.
The Pakistan Business Council was represented among others by Chairman Asad Umar, Kamran Mirza, Abdul Razak Dawood, Ali S Habib, Muneer Kamal, Sikandar Mustafa Khan and Asif Jooma.
