January 7, 2003	Tuesday	Ziqa’ad 3, 1423

KARACHI, Jan 6: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Privatization and Investment, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has said that the Board of Investment (BoI) is being restructured and reconstituted with the aim to redefine its role for the 21st century.

In a meeting with members of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) on Monday, he said the BoI will meet after every three months under the presidentship of prime minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali to review the progress.

In order to provide a back up support to BOI, he said three to four groups (usually called a task force) has already been set up to prepare action plan and give new ideas to the BOI.

The main job of the task force, comprising private sector people from Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, is to look after country projects and investment projects.

The task force will also focus on three to four main issues: to point out flaws and hurdles in investment policies and look after investment facilitation and invest promotion. In the next two to three weeks things will become more clear.

Earlier, president KCCI, Shaukat Iqbal said that the privatization process at the provincial level has also failed due to litigation. He said that the government spends Rs80-100 billion every year to cover up losses of state owned enterprises and ultimately, the tax payers have to face the music. The federal government provides a sum of Rs15-20 billion to the KESC as a subsidy.

He said industrialists are perturbed over the rising cost of production due to continuous increase in utility charges.