The Ministry of Commerce will announce three-year trade policy of the country immediately after Eidul Fitr with an aim to enhance the export target for the current fiscal year up to $30 billion.
The ministry has also set an export target of $35 billion for 2016-17 and $40 billion for 2017-18, a source in the ministry said, adding that the new trade policy had been forwarded to the cabinet committee of the parliament for final approval.
The source said that Commerce Ministry has been directed to double the exports, which would be around $50 billion but the trade ministry is targeting $40 billion exports till 2018. Through the exports, the government is expecting to fetch $105 billion in the next three years. In this connection, the ministry will announce extraordinary relief to surgical instruments, food products, fisheries and others export goods.
According to the provisional figures of the Ministry of Commerce, total exports of the country remained at around $24.5 billion in last fiscal year (2014-15) against its target of $27 billion while the imports stood at around $38 billion.
An official of the Commerce Ministry said: “New three-year trade policy would bring many incentives for the exporters as the government would definitely try to achieve all its targets by 2018.”
He said the policy would announce special duty relief to the exporting sectors to bring latest machinery for which the government had fixed a special budget. The official said that this time the government was mulling to get access in the neighboring countries including China, Tajikistan, and other central Asian countries.
All Pakistan Motor Dealers Association (APMDA) Chairman HM Shahzad while talking to Pakistan Today said the trade ministry was likely to accept APMDA’s demand to give special duty incentives of 50 per cent depreciation on the import of used cars and further enhance the limit of used car from three years to five years.
He said the car manufacturers in Pakistan were earning almost double profits by importing Completely Build Up (CBU) units including heavy jeeps and over 1800cc cars from the customers’ booked money and not giving any incentive to them.
He said the government should allow the import of used cars up to five years so that the motor dealers could give tough competition to manufacturing companies, who were not investing in their units and were importing CBU units directly from Japan and other countries.
A textile exporter Zubair Motiwala said: “Due to the past policies of the ministry, textile export is almost on the verge of destruction and if government did not announce any incentive for the exporting sector the industry would start protests and shut their units throughout the country.”
He said due to wrong policies of the government, the textile industry could not compete in the international markets and even from the Bangladesh textile products.
