The Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry here Tuesday urged the State Bank of Pakistan to bring the mark-up rate down to a single digit in the upcoming monetary policy scheduled for August 10.
LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh said that priority of the SBP should be the availability of cheaper money to the business community to strengthen the process of industrialization and arrest the fast widening graph of unemployment. In the last two years interest rates in Europe and the United States have been brought down close to zero to save the economies from collapse, he said, asserting, this is the time that interest rates should be brought down to single digit to spur growth.
He said that a cut of 50 to 100 basis points would not be doing any service to the windling economy. The ongoing economic scenario shows that there was hardly any time left for economic managers of the country and they all should understand gravity of situation that there would be no business community buyer if the interest rates are kept higher, he added. The LCCI President said that private sector was the only hope for salvaging the country therefore a significant cut in cost of doing business is direly needed. During last few years, the private sector had suffered set-back because of higher cost of doing business.
