THE visit of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to Karachi, the business and financial hub of the country, assumed greater significance as it afforded an opportunity for candid discussions on the issues facing Sindh province and a meaningful interaction with the business community regarding economic issues, which virtually forms part of the pre-budget consultations with important stakeholders. The Prime Minister, who was accompanied by all relevant federal ministers, got a comprehensive briefing about problems of the province with Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah expressing confidence that these would now receive priority as the Prime Minister has the ability to address challenges swiftly. In his address to the members of the business community, the PM hoped that the country’s exports would double in the next five years and sought a proactive role of the businessmen for achieving this target.
There is definitely a need to look into the grievance of the Sindh Chief Minister that the province did not receive proportionate attention in allocation of funding for new schemes during the last four years. Both urban and rural Sindh face serious issues due to lack of infrastructure development and this aspect should be kept in view during planning and making decisions in future. The CM particularly referred to the much delayed project of Karachi Circular Railways (KCR), rehabilitation activities in the context of 2022 floods and rains, augmentation of K-4 and various infrastructure facilities and hopefully the hiccups would be cleared at the earliest to achieve concrete progress without further delay. As for doubling exports in five years, this is a modest target and there are no reasons this should not be achieved if both the government and the private sector join hands to do so. The business and industrial community surely has genuine issues like ever increasing cost of production and doing business and multiplicity of taxes but it is also a fact that they only lay emphasis on extracting more and more incentives and relief from the Government without playing their part sincerely. Modernization, value addition and effective marketing strategies form critical components of any plan to increase exports but our private sector is not ready to invest on research and development as well as innovation. The PM has vowed to devise a comprehensive policy framework to increase exports and we hope this would address all the challenges in a satisfactory manner.
