ISLAMABAD: With a view to boosting jobs, ensuring upswing in exports and making economy sound in next three years — the remaining period of the incumbent regime – the government has decided to invoke ‘out of box solutions’ by abandoning the ‘business as usual’ approach.
The government has made up its mind to double exports in next five years for which the input cost for the export industry needs to be tackled for next 5 years. And to this effect, the government will step up its focus on ‘out of box solutions’ as has been desired by Prime Minister Imran Khan to realize the target of increasing jobs by improving the outlook of exports and economy. This has been disclosed in the summary titled ‘strategy to boost jobs, economy and exports in next three years to be pitched by Ministry of Industries and Production in ECC meeting.
Pakistan needs to capitalize on its best trait to grab the post-COVID-19 opportunities and that is textiles, cereal and leather. The export industry can make Pakistan's economy turn around on a fast track basis and bring massive employment and foreign exchange in near future and years to come to match the targets of the Prime Minister. Already in the international export arena the countries (especially competitors of Pakistan) are going out of way to grab lost markets and exploring new markets. Export-oriented countries are subsidizing, reducing utility (Power & Gas) expenditure to position themselves into the international markets, especially US, Europe. Pakistani textile like other countries got a heavy jolt during that last 6 months with cancellation of large orders. The summary says that now is the time for Pakistan to take back the market share and that can only be done on fast track basis by the textile industry. And it is now or never situation to get the market share which cannot be achieved without the intervention of the cabinet.’ The industries ministry has asked for fixing the gas tariff for export industrial sector at Rs450 ($ 2.65)per MMBTU inclusive of GIDC (gas infrastructure development cess) for financial years 2020-21, 2021-22 &2022-23, including its power generation plants, which may be part of the same concern or incorporated separately; as far as the power produced is input for export oriented only.
And to achieve the targets, Pakistan needs to take new initiatives in the export sector, such as BMR, Artificial Intelligence, worldwide international marketing through E-Commerce, association with companies like Amazon, Alibaba.’
As many as 10 sectors and sub-sectors, the official said, make about 80 percent of total exports of which Textile is 52percent and Cotton is 8% followed by Cereal (6%) and Leather (3.5%). Although Textiles is Pakistan’s forte, yet it is nowhere on the world map of Ready Made Garments (RMG), which is the most value added commodity. “Since exports are declining, therefore it is incumbent on the government decision and policy makers to bring back the Export forte and strength back to Pakistan.” The summary mentions the alarming dwindling trend in exports saying that in 2011 Pakistan’s total exports stood at $24.439billion whereas exports of Bangladesh were at $25.383 billion in the same year. However in 2018, Pakistan exports tumbled to $23.485 billion whereas exports of Bangladesh massively surged to $39.252 billion. And to arrest this declining trend in exports, Pakistan needs to go for out-of-box solutions instead of keeping business as usual.