‘China wants Pakistan to benefit from its development’

KARACHI: Professor Ahsan Iqbal, Federal Minister for Planning, Reform and Development, has said that China wanted Pakistan to get benefits from its development while next phase of China Pakistan Economic Corridor would be related to cooperation amid business and industry of the two countries.
Talking with media at Pakistan Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry after detailed meeting with the businessmen Thursday, he said Pakistan had missed the economic opportunities in the past while it could take off with the CPEC.
In 2013 international media had written bad reputation of Pakistan over economy and law and order but now it was writing it as a new emerging economy. “Foreigners used to meet us in Dubai, now they are booking tickets of Pakistan,” he said.
After agreement with China for $46 billion development projects, Europe, Japan and the US were also looking towards Pakistan for investment here, he said. “After completion of energy projects under CPEC and other initiated projects of Pakistan, we will have 10,000 MW of surplus energy,” he said. However, he said that distribution of electricity also needed improvement as they had capacity of only 16,000 MW’s distribution. Work on distribution from Matyari to Lahore was underway.
Giving target details of Vision 2025, he said Pakistan planned to increase its exports to $150 billion in 10 years, which would not increase through the traditional way and needed value-addition. “We needed to increase exports by $5 to $20 billion annually,” he said.
Commodity prices declined in the international market, which resulted in decline of Pakistan’s exports, as Pakistan was commodity exporter that needed to move towards value-addition.
Pakistan was also planning to list itself amid top 50 countries with ease of doing business countries and increase its Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to $15 billion from $1 billion currently.
He said there was need to broaden tax net and increase tax to GDP ratio to 18 percent by 2025 from 9.8 percent, as current GDP was utilized only on debt servicing and defence expenditures. If they wanted to invest in health and education along with other fronts they needed further borrowing and borrowings created several other issues. Some countries had increased tax to GDP ratio to 25 percent.
Iqbal said people avoided from taxes in Pakistan, as cost of paying taxes was more than not paying. Actually, cost of paying should be less than not paying the taxes, he suggested.
He said law and order situation improved in the country as leadership decided to have zero tolerance for terrorists and law breakers. Karachi’s operation was not against anyone, it was against the violators of law only, he said. In order to create one million jobs annually, country needed a growth of 7.0 to 8.0 percent annually by discouraging the status quo.
Iqbal said Balochistan’s law and order was also poor because of discriminatory policies of Pervez Musharraf, where situation was improved now and crime rate was declining.
After construction of road networks in Balochistan, economic activity was being generated there with small road shops. Addressing media, he said there was need to project image of Pakistan positively to attract foreign investment in the country. He said government was working to prepare code of conduct with the cooperation of Pakistan Broadcast Media and All Pakistan Newspapers Society.
In answer to a question, Iqbal said that development of the infrastructure was a provincial matter, but the federal government was engaged in development of Green Mass Transit of Karachi project along with providing Rs2.0 billion for the water projects.
Earlier, Mian Muhammad Adrees, president FPCCI welcomed the federal minister and urged him that there was need of private-public partnership with taking the business community in confidence on such policies.
He informed that Pakistan’s name in the list of countries with ease of business came at 128th place and amid competitiveness at 131st place, far behind regional and other competitors.