LAHORE: Pakistan has been importing vegetables, pulses and other agro products worth billions of dollars despite being an agrarian country. The government needs to adopt a strict and effective policy to stop it and must adopt the slogan of ‘Be Pakistani, Buy Pakistani’.
These views were expressed by the experts in Jang Economic Session on ‘Be Pakistani- Buy Pakistani – how to make national level moment’. The panellists were Abdul Basit, Tayyab Ali Khan, Rabia Sultan, Maqsood Butt, Sadiq-ur-Rehman Rana and Azeem Bari. The session was hosted by Sikandar Lodhi.
Abdul Basit said that “be Pakistani, buy Pakistani” slogan should be adopted by every Pakistani with honesty and be made it moment. He said Pakistan can produce every item of the world. He suggested that overseas Pakistanis should also prefer to buy Pakistani products in their respective countries that can increase domestic production. He suggested imposing a ban on import of all those items which could be produced in Pakistan to promote local products and industry, besides encouraging the investment.
Tayyab Ali Khan said that national unity was required to come out of crisis. He called for increasing the domestic production of 10 major imported products. He suggested improving the quality of Pakistani products to increase its demand in the world. He called for long-term strategy and required structure to incline the public towards local products shopping.
Rabia Sultan said that every citizen should adopt the policy of buying local products as buyers prefer to buy imported products due to quality, purity, and better packaging so that local producer should focus on these aspects. She said that Pakistan can produce oilseeds, pulses and other agriculture products and the government should focus on it by learning from Chinese and Indian success stories. She said dependence on imported products increased during the last successive era. She called for special assistance and patronage to domestic industry to produce quality products and increase exports.
Maqsood Butt said that the people of third world countries like to buy imported products while number of countries had made strict policies on it to discourage the trend. He called for better packaging, quality, and publicity of the local products to promote the local industry. He said cheap and quality products should be available to public to promote the “made in Pakistan” products.
Sadiq-ur-Rehman Rana said that Pakistani products have competition of Chinese and Indian products in the world market for which it needs to improve the quality of the products. He called for discouraging imports and encouraging the domestic industry and investments for positive results. He suggested strong linkages with industry to promote public-private partnership for job creations.
Azeem Bari said that promotion of domestic products buying was four decades old but now is the time to implement on it effectively. He called for banning imported products and facilitating the exporters with practical steps. He said better results could be achieved only by giving special incentives to industrialists and agriculturalists.
