ISLAMABAD, March 22: Minister for commerce and industries Abdul Razzak Dawood said 20 remaining industrial units under the ministry’s control will be privitized to lift financial burden from the government. Speaking in a PTV programme News Night said these units will be sold after the privitization of big entities PTCL, PSO and banks.

The minister said further restructuring will be carried out in these units to make them viable for privitization.

The ministry of industries had sold 140 industrial units through the privatization ministry and wound up ghee, cement, chemical and ceramic corporations as these were a major burden on the national exchequer.

The minister agreed that the industrial growth was not up to the mark owing to problems of quality and inefficiency.

He said industry can only take off with the establishment of a technological base, human resource development and rational tariffs.

The government in the last budget carried out major restructuring in the tariff structure, he said adding this year too the tariff structure will be changed in a substantial way.

Soon we will be very close to the objective which we have in our mind regarding tariff structure, Dawood observed.

He said the objective behind the reforms was to provide a level playing field to the industry and do away with the SRO culture.

From now on there will be no sector specific SROs and all government policies will be open and transparent and industry will be led by market driven forces, the minister noted.

To a question about the lack of foreign investment, he said foreign investors were concerned about problems related to law and order, intellectual property rights and settlement of business disputes.

So all these problems add up and create a bad perception about the country, he said adding, however, when an investor comes to Pakistan he becomes comfortable after looking at the situation more closely.

The perception of foreign investors about Pakistan is improving since President General Pervez Musharraf’s visits to the United States and Japan.

To a question, he said the provincial governments have a central role in attracting investment.

Citing an example, he said Punjab government successfully ran a campaign to introduce contamination-free cotton in the province and boosted its prospects for investment.—APP