Pakistan needs to increase local, foreign investment: Ambreen Iftikhar
Lahore (MNP) Additional Secretary of Board of Investment Ambreen Iftikhar in a presentation has said that in 2021, $ 175 billion were invested in South Asia, out of which only 2 billion dollars were invested in Pakistan. Keeping this in mind, the Invest Pakistan initiative is being launched. This is a step in which we will first develop a national framework for investment.
She was speaking at Invest Pakistan Concept Launch Event at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry. LCCI President Kashif Anwar, DG Board of Investment Zulfiqar Ali and Director Board of Investment Adnan Munir Rajput also spoke on while Executive Committee Members were also present.
The Additional Secretary said that the process through which BOI will encourage investors to invest in Pakistan, will be based on investor targeting.
She said that the national framework will not only notify the investment but will also help to operationalize it. This framework will facilitate investors by identifying them and realizing them regarding investment opportunities.
She said that apart from this, at this time we are taking the budget proposals in a different way. Because of the IMF conditions, we have suggested that these conditions should be shared with the private sector so that they know which policies cannot be changed and which policies have scope. Under this new process, the suggestions of the business community will be brought into the finance bill so that they can be implemented easily.
She added that we want all chambers to introduce a joint plan. She said that we understand that the business community is currently facing many challenges but the most important thing is that the government cannot solve these problems alone but we all have to come up with a joint solution because these are common problems.
She said that we want to attract our own investors before the foreign investors. To know the needs of the investors, we are working on the investor targeting model.
LCCI President Kashif Anwar said that Lahore Chamber has always emphasized on making the Rules & Regulations simple and business friendly so that the Business Climate in the country can be improved and all possible facilitation for the investors. This will definitely help in promoting Ease of Doing Business.
He said that the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry has worked for many years with the Government of Punjab and the World Bank to improve Pakistan’s ranking of Ease of Doing Business, which has led to our country’s ranking from 148 By improving, it reached the 108th rank.
He said that Lahore Chamber has held many meetings with the relevant authorities in this regard and has always talked about simplifying Regulatory Complaint because it creates many eases for local and foreign investors to make investments and set up new businesses.
The LCCI President said that although the World Bank has stopped issuing Doing Business rankings after 2020, we commend the Board of Investment’s management for taking new initiatives to advance the Reforms Agenda in collaboration with the federal and provincial governments.
He said that in our opinion, promotion of foreign investment as well as local investment is the most important need of the hour. According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan, the ratio of total investment in our country is only 15% of Gross Domestic Production, which is quite low. The share of private investment in this is only 10% of GDP, which has become inevitable to increase. We hope that PRMI And Invest Pakistan will be helpful in this regard.
He said that if we talk about the data of Net Foreign Direct Investment, it was 2.6 billion dollars in 2019-20, which decreased to 1.82 billion dollars in 2020-21, while in 2021-22, its volume was limited to only 1.87 billion dollars, which is our economy. is extremely low in terms of requirements.
He said that the local investment cannot increase until the problems of local industries are resolved. For example, our industries have to import a lot of raw materials, essential components and various machinery which are not available in the country, on which they have to pay 100% cash margin, regulatory duty, customs duty and additional customs duty, which are eliminated. need to. Besides reducing the rate of withholding tax for businesses, the issues of pending refunds and multiple audits are pending.
He added that in order to promote local investment, our government has to solve some problems related to taxation on a priority basis, which will also improve the ease of doing business. Currently taxpayers have to undergo multiple audits of income tax and sales tax, we appeal that the number of these audits should be reduced
The LCCI President said it is almost impossible to increase investment without reducing the cost of doing business. Our industries are facing problems like policy rate which has reached 17% and high energy cost due to which the production cost has increased a lot.
The economic conditions require that the government should give first priority to import substitution and give second priority to increasing exports to the desired extent, which we think can be possible only with industrialization and localization.
He said that the Board of Investment also needs to attract private investment to build new dams and reservoirs. We should also expand the solar energy network as we still get less than 5% of our energy requirement from it. It will also help in bringing the imports to minimum level.
He said that with the help of Special Economic Zones, the Process of Industrialization will be strengthened, but if they are considered as Special Export Zones, it will be very easy to invest in them as well as increase exports.
The LCCI President said that the government should immediately announce the Declaration Scheme so that the Undeclared Foreign Reserves can become part of our economy.
He informed the participants of the meeting that the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry has asked heads of the political parties to share their economic plans with the Lahore Chamber.
