Private sector’s proposals to be incorporated in future trade policy

LAHORE: The ministry of commerce has decided to incorporate the proposals of public and private sectors in its Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF) 2018/23.

This was stated by Noman Aslam, director general of Trade Policy at the ministry of commerce, while addressing a roundtable “Achieving export competitiveness in Pakistan”, organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), on Tuesday.

Charting the development of Pakistan’s trade policy over the last decade, he highlighted Pakistan’s movement towards a more forward-looking and longer-term approach since 2009, when the ministry drafted its first three-year STPF.

In this regard, he mentioned the ministry’s forthcoming trade policy framework, which will be valid for five years, between 2018 and 2023.

Speaking on Pakistan’s decline in exports over the last two decades, Gonzalo J Varela, senior economist at the World Bank Group (WBG), presented the details of the country’s challenges in penetrating more diverse export markets and leveraging global value chains as a vehicle of sustained economic growth.

He explained how Pakistan’s overall share of the global export market had declined in comparison to peer economies such as India and Bangladesh, even though the country’s exports had increased in absolute terms.

To reverse this decline, he recommended more market and product diversification and measures to improve the quality and sophistication of Pakistan’s export basket. Nadia Rocha, senior economist at the WBG, recommended measures to reduce the cost of doing business, with a few towards creating a more favourable climate for foreign direct investment. She also highlighted the need for greater trade liberalisation efforts, which can boost productivity and export competitiveness in Pakistan.