Pakistan should take cue from foreign business leaders

LAHORE: Experts say that Pakistani leaders should take cue from the interest shown by the top leaders of Singapore, Malaysia, and Korea where the head of state devised economic policies in consultation with top business houses and ensured implementation through monthly reviews.
They said in the last 30 months, Prime Minister Nawaz Shariff held one marathon session with businessmen from different sectors on September 11, 2015.
They said the consensus developed in that meeting was never implemented. In fact they pointed out that even the promises made by the PM on some reforms in days (not even weeks) have not been announced even two months later. They said the flaw in the meeting was that the number of invited businessmen was too high, instead of only top business houses.
“You cannot take a sane decision when dealing with a crowd,” said economist Faisal Qamar, adding that a sort of consensus should have been developed at lower level and top ten businessmen representing different sectors should have been granted audience with the PM.
He said five hours that he spared to put the economy back on were wasted as more than 100 business representatives got on average three minutes to plead with the PM.
He said some problems faced by each manufacturing sector are common and it was wastage of time if each sector highlighted the same problems time and again. Qamar said this spared no time for policy reform recommendations that the economy badly needs. He said there are rules that have become redundant and ought to be scrapped that could save a lot of red tape and eliminate any corruption avenues.
He said there is a dire need to reduce the cost of doing business and streamline procedures. These changes would have been better explained by the big business leaders. A 30 minutes briefing on different aspects of reforms and policies by big businesses might have motivated the PM to agree to monthly meetings with business leaders to review progress on suggested reforms. He said the September 11 meeting with the businessmen “crowd” probably left the PM more confused than ever.
Economist Asif Ali Shahid said the PM is under the illusion that the economy is moving in the right direction. The accounting practices adopted by the finance minister have helped improve the macroeconomic indicators. There has been a shift in the economy in the past two years where labour intensive sectors are buoyant while some large scale manufacturing sectors are operating under duress.
This, he added has given credence to the Dar doctrine by default. Still it does not mean that the reforms are unduly delayed or carried out on the whims of the bureaucracy and the finance minister.
Shahid said after the Chinese commitment on China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the spending on infrastructure projects has increased. He said private housing schemes have also accelerated the construction processes and small and medium enterprises are expanding. He said this has engaged a large segment of unskilled workforce. He said since construction in Pakistan is not mechanised it is highly labour intensive. He said this is the reason that the domestic uptake of cement has increased by over 17 percent in the last five months.
Shahid said another positive for the economy was the grant of GSP Plus status to Pakistan last year. He said the benefit of this status went to the value added apparel sector. The apparel sector is one of the most value added sector of the economy and most labour intensive as well. He said the textile exports have declined in the past two years, but the knitwear and garment exports have continued to increase. Pakistan has added $1 billion in apparel export per annum that has somewhat compensated the steep decline in basic textile exports.