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Tuesday March 19, 2024

WB advises credit access to improve business environment

By our correspondents
January 23, 2018

KARACHI: The World Bank on Monday advised Pakistan to facilitate businesses in tax payments and increase their access to credit in order to improve the country’s investment climate.

“The ranking of Pakistan in ease of doing business has been falling gradually for 10 years,” Amjad Bashir, senior economist of the World Bank told a press conference. Sindh Board of Investment (SBI) and the bank jointly held the media briefing on East of Doing Business Reforms program in the province.

Bashir said Pakistan’s ranking dropped during the past years when other economies in South Asia enhanced facilities for their private sector. Pakistan ranked 147th in the World Bank’s ease of doing business index last year.

The bank’s economist said the federal government and all four provinces initiated reform programs to facilitate private sector after realising the unfriendly business environment. Washington-based lender is helping the government to improve business environment and the bank is bearing all the expenses for reforms program.

“During the past few years, India implemented around eight reforms and improved its ranking by 30 points,” the economist added. “On the other hand, Pakistan implemented four reforms and remained unable to improve its ranking.” Bashir, however, commended the improvement in online property registration and land reforms introduced in Karachi and improvement in cross-border trade due to automation. He also appreciated the government’s commitment to move Pakistan up to 100th rank in the World Bank’s ease of doing index.

Naheed Memon, the focal person for Doing Business Reforms in Sindh, said the provincial government plans to automate business registration via a portal that will link all provincial and central databases and authorities for starting a business. The portal will integrate all departmental procedures online to facilitate provincial registration from a single place in real time.

Sindh government has already implemented some reforms, such as land administration and revenue management information system at the Board of Revenue. “It was the first system in the country to automate the process of property registration,” Memon, who is the chairperson of SBI, said in a statment. She said the automation of property registration has begun as all current registrations are scanned, indexed and made available online for online title search through digital scanning unit. The time for execution and registration of deed is now less than 100 days. This procedure took more than 200 days previously.

The provincial agencies are already reforming regulations related to construction permits. The reforms include de-notification of environmental approval for low impact projects, simplification of procedures and reduction in timeline for water connection at Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) and reduction in number of procedures at Sindh Building Control Authority for obtaining permit.

The provincial reforms plan, which is a part of the larger plan to introduce Doing Business Reforms at the national level, proposes reforms related to starting a business, construction permits, property registration, enforcing contracts and tax payment.

The provincial government has formed Sindh Investment Climate Improvement Cell for execution of the reform agenda. “The government of Sindh remains committed to making Sindh into an easy and most competitive investment hub in Pakistan,” SBI chief added.