- Demands action against elements damaging national interests
The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) on Sunday criticized the architects of the trade policy who preferred the interests of industry of a certain area over the entire national interest. It called for an action against those involved in drafting Strategic Trade Policy Framework 2015-18 which is full of flaws and has failed to promote the interests of business community of the country while preferring the industry of Gujranwala Division.
The fall in exports gains momentum as top government functionaries continue to make announcements and ignore practical steps, said Dr Murtaza Mughal, President PEW.
In a statement issued here today, he said that the trade policy is highly defective and inconsistent with ground realities. This has put a big question mark on the over-ambitious export target of $35 billion by 2018.
He said that those who drafted the policy have ignored some important sectors while favouring some others due to political concerns; this amounts to playing with the country’s future.
The policy should be revisited and fixed, while action should be taken against those who tried to gain mileage out of it on the cost of national interests, he said.
He said that trade deficit of the current fiscal may touch the mark of 25 billion dollars which must be taken seriously by the policymakers.
He said falling exports and investment, as well as sliding remittances, have pushed trade deficit to 9.3 billion dollars in the first four months of the current fiscal. If this trend continues the deficit will touch the $ 27.9 billion mark by the end of the current fiscal, he said.
Government has estimated the deficit for the ongoing fiscal year to be 20.5 billion dollars which will be more than its projections as the deficit for the first four months is 22 percent more than the corresponding period last year, he added.
He said that exports dropped by 6.3 percent in the first four months while imports swelled by 8.6 percent due to the absence of serious efforts to cut the import bill. The import target of 45.2 billion will not be manageable unless serious efforts are initiated as the economic corridor could jack up the bill by 11 percent, he said.
Dr Murtaza Mughal said that exports were above 24 billion dollars when the current government came to power, since then exports had been dropping continuously.
