KARACHI, April 26: The manufacturing sector has shown a remarkable recovery in last nine months registering a record growth of 8 per cent. “A few category of industries are showing double digit growth in last nine months,” the federal finance minister Shaukat Aziz informed participants of a one-day “National Industry Conference 2003” on Saturday.
Organized by the Business Support Centre of the Institute of Business Management, the national industry conference focussed on four categories of industry, which are automobile, pharmaceutical, sugar and textile and adopted a set of recommendations in the concluding session.
In an obvious reference to an observation made by Dr Javed A Ansari, Dean CBM, in his issue paper, which he read earlier, the finance minister declared that industrial growth remains the pivotal point of the official planning. “Industry has a strategic importance and it remains a big employer,” he pointed out.
Dr Ansari in his issue paper had made a scathing attack on “policy liberalisation” which in Pakistan “has meant neglect of the industrial sector with public sector investment collapsing and an absence of foreign investor.”
“The multilateral institutions continue to advise us to forget about the industrial sector and to accept our increasing technological backwardness as inevitable,” Dr Ansari reminded the participants of the conference and finance minister rather in an oblique manner and without making a direct reference to a reported suggestion of World Bank that sought winding up of seven major categories of industries in Pakistan.
Shaukat Aziz said that textile vision and a long term development strategy for engineering sector were drawn up in the recent past to meet the challenges of globalization and to remain competitive in the business.
Reduction in tariff structure was another step to keep industry competitive and he remarked “gone are the days when industry thrived behind the high tariff walls.”
The finance minister said that next budget would be industry-driven and that it would focus on encouraging small and medium enterprises.
He urged the participants of the conference to identify “new industries” for being given support and assistance, and drew their attention towards the phenomenal growth of Gujrat-based fan industry. He said a delegation of businessmen from Sialkot had informed him that there were 200 such industrial products that beg for support and patronage.
Shaukat Aziz chose the occasion to remind the audience again of the reforms that were set in operation during last three years and which have now laid the foundation of a stable economic structure paving the way for higher growth in the coming years.
He predicted 6 per cent annual growth rate in the coming years after the country would show a growth rate of 4.6 per cent this year and a further improvement next year.
Dr Javed Ansari in his paper said that the large scale manufacturing sector has picked up growth during 2003 but the trend rate of growth of manufacturing and value addition remained unsatisfactory in last decade.
He quoted extensively from the studies and surveys made by Pakistani scholars and a UNIDO report in 2002 to establish that a deindustrialization process had set in the country during last decade.
“A de-industrializing economy is necessarily a de-technologicalizing economy — an economy losing competitive advantage and falling behind in all international markets,” Dr Javed asserted.
He was not happy on the “great Chinese Wall” that restricts business schools from interacting with the business firms and banks.
The concluding session of the conference adopted a set of recommendations for the pharmaceuticals, automobiles, textiles and sugar industries.
