Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry Monday urged government to focus on promotion of regional trade for being more efficient in terms of cost and logistics. “The country needs to develop a strategy of engagement with regional countries to maximise mutual economic and commercial benefits.” In a statement issued here, the LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh, Senior Vice President Kashif Younis Meher and Vice President Saeeda Nazar said that Pakistan occupies a strategic location and can play a major role in transforming the region into a trade and manufacturing hub. The LCCI office-bearers said that the promotion of regional trade also offers very promising benefits to the industry as it would enable it to source raw materials from the region that reduces cost of production and creates opportunities to improve economy of scales by having easy access to neighbouring markets on the other hand.
The LCCI office-bearers said that the growth in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region that houses 22 per cent of the world population has been projected to surpass 50 per cent of the world’s GDP by 2030 and that calls for immediate steps by the government to boost intra-regional trade. SAARC is the biggest trading block in the world with lowest level of trade. Contribution of South Asia in the global GDP is less than two per cent and its share in exports in only 1.5 per cent, which does not reflect true potential the region owns. Pace of growth in SAARC region has been slower at five per cent as compared with other blocs like NAFTA, EU and ASEAN wherein intra-regional trade is estimated at 62 per cent, 58 per cent and 28 per cent respectively.
