Islamabad
The Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) has called upon the government to focus on making policies for better development of engineering sector that it has great potential to boost exports capacity of the country and make Pakistan and self-reliant and industrialized economy.
ICCI President Khalid Iqbal Malik said that Pakistan was heavily depending on textiles products for exports while the share of textiles in global market was decreasing. He said the engineering goods constituted around 50 per cent of the world trade while, Pakistan’s engineering goods share in overall global exports was just 0.0151 per cent which was quite negligible. It showed that the country was losing huge export potential by ignoring engineering sector of the economy. He said Pakistan could earn billions of dollars of exports by creating an enabling environment for engineering sector.
He said Pakistan’s current deficit has surged to almost $9 billion in the first 11 months of 2016-17 from $3.217 billion in the corresponding period of last year showing an increase of around 177 percent. Similarly, Pakistan’s trade deficit has gone up to $30 billion during the first 11 months of current fiscal year which showed that our exports were on the decline and imports were on the rise. He said the best way to reverse this unhealthy trend was to focus on engineering sector
Khalid Iqbal Malik said that better development of engineering industry was the key to social and economic progress. He said the need for developing this strategically important sector was universally recognized as the engineering sector has the potential to create immense employment opportunities, promote auxiliary and ancillary industries, enhance defence capabilities of the country, cause manifold increase in export earnings and provide services to the large scale manufacturing sector besides creating numerous other benefits.
He said all the strong economies have achieved phenomenal progress by developing engineering sector and Pakistan should also pay special attention to this important sector in order to emerge as a strong economy in the comity of nations.
