January 25, 2002	Friday	Ziqa’ad 10, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Jan 24: Pakistan is suffering a colossal financial loss of Rs450 billion per annum due to poor quality of products and wastage of by-products.

This was stated by Commerce Minister Abdul Razak Dawood while presiding over a meeting to give final touches to a plan for the registration of National Productivity Organization (NPO) as a 100 per cent public limited company.

The commerce ministry was currently procuring information from North Carolina state university and India on textile spinning sector that would be made available to the NPO and industrialists.

NPO’s model field office will be established at Lahore in collaboration with Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), to be followed up at other major cities.

It is envisaged that the information would be analyzed and developed for bench marking to improve productivity, quality, manufacturing standards and training skills. This meant that all these factors would have specific standards to maximize productivity, quality and quantity for better output.

The NPO was being strengthened in the backdrop of challenges of globalization and implementation of World Trade Organization (WTO) policies under various specific deadlines.

In the initial stage, focus would be on areas where minor improvements could yield maximum dollar gain coupled with high prospects of employment.

The NPO would play the role of a bridge between the government and the industrialists through a sound infrastructure, comprehensive database and launching a world-wide information system.

NPO has so far prepared a database of 8,000 foreign trained resource persons and launched 290 books on the Internet.