Local, Foreign Investors Being Facilitated Equally In SEZs: Haroon Sharif

Minister of State and Chairman Board of Investment Haroon Sharif Monday said that local and foreign investors were being treated equally with regard to provision of facilities in Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Nov, 2018 ) :Minister of State and Chairman board of Investment Haroon Sharif Monday said that local and foreign investors were being treated equally with regard to provision of facilities in Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

Talking to business community here at Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), he stressed the need for working on key areas as how to simplify taxes and rationalize regulatory duty and other structure, as well as ways and means to actually make the country's exports competitive.

BOI Chairman was of the view that policy consistency was the only thing that could revive the confidence of the investors, adding that every businessman knew the defined functions of the Board but incumbent government was going to change its composition by ensuring its basic function of facilitation and helping the line ministries/departments, province and private sector to structure these.

Haroon Sharif said, "My worry is that do we have the capability to absorb the interest shown in various sectors by China, UAE, Malaysia and other countries, because our planning process has since long been halted." He cited that world was changing fast and centralized planning, which was effective in communist system, was now vanishing and a number of countries had abolished the centralized planning and their ministries/departments formulated their respective development strategies and planning, he cited.

The Minister of State said that changes were being brought in the BOI structure to make it more responsive, asserting that government needed support from private sector to double investment-to-GDP ratio for an accelerated economic growth. Investment-to-GDP ratio in Pakistan was around 15 percent against 30 percent in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India, he said and added that Pakistan had set a macro-level target of 25 percent for investment-to-GDP for next five years.

"We need huge support from private sector as government alone cannot achieve economic goals," he maintained.

He opined that country would have to take strict reforms to get rid of IMF, while focus on productivity, transfer of technology and job creation could help overcome economic challenges.

Haroon Sharif said that basic exports should be made value-added to get more benefits and to earn much-needed foreign exchange while tax-to-GDP ratio would have to be increased. It was a good sign that foreign investment was rising and there was a very good response from UAE, Saudi Arabia and Korea, he added.

LCCI President Almas Hyder called for developing an investment strategy equally beneficial to local and foreign investors. He suggested that cost of doing business should be brought down to let the local industry survive against imported items to improve the competitive edge of local companies in international market.

He also voiced for industrial zoning of Lahore, as it was not clear how many acres of land around Lahore would be acquired to set up SEZ especially keeping in view expansion and development for next 20 years.

Almas Hyder said that BOI should plan to create a special window to provide cheap credit to startups and SMEs.

LCCI Senior Vice President Khawaja Shahzad Nasir, Vice President Fahim-ur-Rehman Saigal said that improving the Paying Taxes Ranking, there was a need to reduce total number of Tax Payments to eight on the model of Malaysia to facilitate the business community.