LAHORE, May 2: Federal Minister for Industries, Production and Special Initiatives Jehangir Khan Tareen has said that his ministry has fixed target of increasing share of manufacturing sector in the GDP from present 18 per cent to 25 per cent in next five years. Speaking at a function at LCCI on Monday, the minister regretted that share of manufacturing in GDP remained stagnant during last 25 years as in 1980 it was at 18 per cent and remained the same till last year.
The function was also attended by LCCI Executive Committee members including Mohammad Ali Mian and Mohammad Younas Sheikh. “Pakistan and Korea had same percentage of manufacturing in their respective GDP in 1960 but today we are still at 18 per cent while South Korea is at 40 per cent and Malaysia at 30 per cent,” he said.
He said that by increasing share of manufacturing in the GDP, more job opportunities could be generated without which development was not possible. The minister claimed that in the medium-term development plan, the government had set the target of enhancing share of manufacturing in GDP to 20.5 per cent, but he see no significant achievement in this figure, so his ministry fixed what he called a challenging target.
For this purpose, the minister maintained, the government had to create more skilled manpower. He said that at present all the technical and vocational training institutes were passing out 200,000 people per annum while Pakistan had to develop this capacity to one million skilled persons per annum to meet this target.
Tareen said that exercises were underway to ensure provision of cheaper raw materials to the industry and rationalization of duties in the forthcoming budget. He said that the government understand importance of cheaper raw material and rationalization of duties to ensure continuation of industrial growth. He also assured the LCCI members that the government was also working on the measures to avoid under-invoicing and dumping of foreign goods.
He said that now the Central Board of Revenue with the change of management had become more open and with a different attitude. He said that they were also considering to bring down the duty slab of 25 per cent to 20 per cent, but some of the sectors would not having this reduction in order to save the domestic industry.
The minister said an exercise was also in progress to minimize the rebate process or totally abolish it in some of the sectors.
