Minister for Defence Production Rana Tanveer Hussain the other day said that defence products witnessed a surge of 35 per cent in the past three years.
The minister underlined the need for setting up a company to promote exports of defence products in a more efficient manner.
Member of National Assembly (MNA) Shehryar Afridi in a meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Defence Production suggested that every defence production unit should have its own export promotion team so that each and every product could be introduced in the world markets under an improved mechanism.
Defence production departments had their own arrangements for showcasing their products in different exhibitions at national and international levels.
He said the country’s defence exports had witnessed a significant increase during the last three years adding when the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government came into power in 2013, the Karachi Shipyard Engineering and Works (KSEW) and Heavy Industries Taxila (HIT) were running in loss but now they had been turned into profit earning entities.
The NA standing committee observed that Pakistan was now considered a good competitor in the international market due to the quality of the defence products being developed indigenously.
The chairman said he visited various defence production units and witnessed that all were working at their full capacity to meet the needs of the armed forces as the country was in a state of war. He recommended that there should be an industrial zone for defence products so that the potential of skilled labour of the Darra Adam Khel could be utilised positively.
