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Efforts to bring investors back to KP yield results

Outgoing KPCCI chief enlists achievements

By Riaz Khan Daudzai
September 29, 2015
PESHAWAR: The business community of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa imperceptibly succeeded in its efforts over the last one year to burnish the image and lured the investment back that once had flown out of the province.
The outgoing president of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KPCCI), Fuad Ishaq, in his parting interview with The News said on Monday that at least a dozen of the businessmen who had left the province started coming back to the province.
He believed that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was fast becoming an investment destination for the businessmen across the world.
Fuad Ishaq added that to take ample advantage of the improvement brought about by the ongoing military operation Zarb-e-Azb to the province and adjoining tribal areas, the premier body of the traders and business adopted a well-thought-out two pronged agenda to restore the situation conducive for investment and business activities.
“We engaged a number of the notables, foreign diplomats, high-ranking government officials, federal ministers, such as governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Federal Finance Ishaq Dar who attended events organised by the chamber to bolster confidence of the business community and foreign investors. The world business leaders and leaders from the digital world visited the chamber to give a message of peace and security to the world in their own peculiar manner,” the KPCCI outgoing president said.
“While on the other hand the chamber launched an intensive agenda to seek tariff and non-tariff relief from the federal government to enable the businessmen and traders to revive businesses and bring those back who had left the province to invest here,” he said.
To mention only fewer examples, he said some local groups, who shifted to other provinces and even abroad are now vying for the projects the province showcased for investment.
“The oil refinery is one such project for which more than three investors are scrambling, while hydropower generation projects in the province have also drawn great interest from the investors,” Fuad Ishaq.
He added that all this was happening due to the confidence local business community instilled into investors who were once shying away from the province.
The diplomats of Japan, Portugal, Iran, India, Germany, and others have also evinced interest in investing in the province, particularly in hydropower generation projects when they visited the Chamber House.
The KPCCI chief said that at the local or federal level, the role of the business community to strengthen economy of the province remained par excellence as huge tax and non-tax relief had been attained from the government.
“A five-year holiday in income tax and turn-over tax has been secured from the federal government in the annual budget for the current fiscal,” he said.
He added that export of perishable items to the neighbouring Afghanistan that could earlier only be carried out in US dollar has now been allowed in Pakistani rupee.
He said the condition of 110 percent guarantee on the export goods to Central Asian Republics (CARs) via Afghanistan had also been waived off, which was another milestone to enable the country to raise formal trade with Afghanistan and CARs to around $7 billion.
To seize the opportunity offered by the relative peace as a result of the military operation against militants, he said the government was spending Rs500 million to build a high-tech expo centre in the province where its products and services would be showcased, which will auger well for the manufacturing and industrialisation in