LAHORE: The provincial governments need to review their present economic role, outline their targets and develop their own visions in order to facilitate the industry to compete in the world market.
"Provinces need to develop capacity and skills to manage the economy of post-quota regime. It is critical because it is the provinces where all trade and economic policies are to be enforced and laws, rules, and regulations have to be enacted or amended with a view to preparing the economy meet the challenges of free trade era," says leading businessman and WTO expert Akber Sheikh.
"The federal authorities also need to allow provinces evolve and build up capacities to meet new challenges of international trade," he says. The devolution of power plan might have taken some powers and authority away from the provinces and given them to districts. "But, I would say, they must try to grasp the opportunities offered by the new international trade order, under WTO, to enhance their role and authority instead of resenting the loss of some powers to the local governments," he says.
Mr Sheikh insists that provinces should also set their targets for measuring the performance on such issues related to readiness for WTO era. "It'd lead to healthy competition between them, and play a critical role in the progress of national economy."
In order to enhance the provincial role, Mr Sheikh says, it is imperative for the "central government to take new realities into account and allow greater responsibilities to the federating units along with more funds under the National Finance Commission (NFC) to achieve their targets".
He says "certain specific funds collected by the federation on behalf of provinces or for proportional transfer to them like the Workers' Participation Fund, EOBI, export development surcharge, etc., should promptly be transferred to them."
Moreover, the experts believe, the "industry's complaints against the districts need to be addressed at the higher level because in most cases the industry has no voting leverage in the district of its location".
The interaction between the industry and the provinces must be enhanced and the former should look to the latter as facilitator, and not as mere collector of levies.
"The businessmen in Pakistan generally look towards the centre for policy guidance and changes, regulatory issues, facilitation, etc. The role of provinces as seen by the businessmen is confined to the issues related to levies and labour laws. Such perceptions need to be changed and the provincial government take the role of facilitator and not of regulator only," he says.
Mr Sheikh says the provincial government need also be "leading the federal government in attracting investment", and set targets for achieving a certain level of investment every year and create employment by acting as a facilitator and an intermediary between the industry and the federal government. The provinces must "quit the habit of dividing" the WTO-related issues into federal issues and provincial issues and move away from the federal issues. This is a self-defeating approach, and the provinces should get rid of it forthwith, he says. The provincial administration has got to raise the levels of knowledge and expertise in WTO-related matters, and be able to analyze and quantify competitiveness and compliance of the industry."This effort can only be undertaken through public-private partnership."
