KARACHI: Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has strongly criticized the ministry of commerce for ignoring the apex trade body at the recent important visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to China.
President FPCCI Engr. Daroo Khan Achakzai regretted that the ministry of commerce specially the Advisor to Prime Minister on Commerce for not helping the Prime Minister and wasting all his efforts due to their attitude and disconnect with the business community.
In a statement on Tuesday, he cited an example that during the recent important visit of the Prime Minister to China, MOC arranged Pakistan business forum and B2B meetings between Pakistani and Chinese businessmen.
“It was surprising that Pakistan Business Council (PBC) represented the business community of Pakistan at this important forum.”
PBC is a non-elected body of few elite businessmen originally formed under the patronage of present Advisor to PM on Commerce and Industry.
PBC Irrespective of its Professional merits or demerits, it cannot be a substitute to the democratically elected representatives of business community FPCCI, the national chamber of the country, but somehow the unjustified patronage of Advisor to PM has given it a more prominent role in shaping the trade and economic policies, whereas genuine stakeholders have been sidelined.
This has resulted in deterioration of Business confidence as the policies are formulated more on intellectual ideas of few instead of input of ground realities based on input from the real stakeholders. Such policies would not help the Government to come out of its present crisis.
The FPCCI president praised the recent achievements of the Prime Minister during his visit to China. The Signing of FTA-II and ML-1 projects will go a long way in bringing up Country’s economy.
He said that the vision and hard work of PM is unprecedented in the history of the Country. His five points agenda of at OBR forum of mitigating climate change, establishing a BRI tourism corridor for promoting people-to-people contacts inter-cultural understanding, anti-corruption cooperation, poverty alleviation fund, and further liberalizing trade and investment flows by encouraging private sector and businesses is revolutionary ideas and were appreciated at all levels.
Unfortunately he has inherited an economy, which is very difficult to manage, and he faces gigantic task to stabilize this. The business community has always resolved support for the Prime Minister in his efforts.
It is worth mentioning that while Country’s own Ministry of Commerce ignored FPCCI, the apex trade body of the Country while the Councils of Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) of Chongqing, Tianjin and Xin Jiang Provinces met the President of FPCCI and immediately signed MoUs with him during the Belt and Road Forum at Beijing thus recognizing the importance of the elected representative of the business community.
President FPCCI has urged the Prime Minister that his hard work and vision will only yield fruitful results, when his team will take the entire business community into confidence instead of patronizing few.
He requested the prime minister to direct all concerned trade, investment, economic Ministries and departments to engage the elected bodies of Business community specially FPCCI for their input on all economic issues and give weightage to their nominations for advisory and consultative bodies, trade delegations and important forums abroad.
