WB assistance sought to diversify BoI operations

ISLAMABAD: Board of Investment (BoI) has sought technical assistance from World Bank to build human resource capacity, fine-tune investment policy, and redesign the institution's web portal for improving and diversifying its operations, keeping in view the changing investment climate of the country, an official said on Wednesday.
“The pursuits liberalisation, deregulation, and disinvestment policies in the last two decades have brought about significant improvements in domestic and foreign investments; however, more needs to be done,” Naeem Y Zamindar, chairman Board of Investment (BoI), said during a meeting with Patchamuthu llangovan, the country director of World Bank Group, at his office.
“World Bank and BOI have been business reform partners since 2014 when first ‘ease of doing business action plan’ was inaugurated. As a result Pakistan rose higher on World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index leaving many South Asian countries behind.”
Zamindar said currently the engagement was on two initiatives: first is the ‘ease of doing business initiative’ and the second ‘non-lending technical assistance.’
“BoI along with finance division worked closely with World Bank monitoring the ‘ease of doing business reforms’ at both federal and provincial levels and formulated the 'Doing Business Strategy 2016' with assistance the multilateral lender” he said.
The BoI chief added that this collaboration had now extended to 'doing business action plan 2018', which was in its final stage of completion.
He informed the WB official that the BoI had organised two seminars to update the existing and potential contributions of the reforms undertaken by the government so far with the support of World Bank, improving Pakistan’s ranking in 2017. "We will continue to raise awareness and understanding in this regard," Zamindar said.