January 29, 2006	Sunday	Zilhaj 28, 1426

ISLAMABAD, Jan 28: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Saturday directed all relevant agencies to move promptly on re-designing of procedures and processes, strengthening of infrastructure to improve the logistics chain to reduce the cost of business and facilitate trade and investment in Pakistan.

Chairing a meeting of the task force on National Trade Corridor (NTC), at Prime Minister House, the premier said that improved roads, railways, airports and port facilities would increase competitiveness of our products on the world markets.

He also reviewed the implementation status of the decisions earlier taken particularly progress on matters related to railways, trade facilitation and ports, national highways, trucking modernization, air transport etc.

“We should not stay in our comfort zones but look around us to improve relative performance so that we achieve global standards of efficiency and performance”, Shaukat said.

The premier was informed that the performance of Customs Department had improved and the clearance time at KICT had been reduced to two days resulting in projected annual saving of Rs0.4 billion and the first 15pc reduction in wet charges would come into force in July and would save Rs1.7 billion a year.

The prime minister was informed that the feasibility study of National Expressway Corridor had been completed and it had been agreed that no agency would establish a permanent check-post on national highways. Relevant agencies would prepare a SOP for coordination with National Highway Authority (NHA) and other agencies.

He was also informed that work was going on for modernization of the trucking sector. Additional actions were being initiated and all provinces would have computerized vehicles registration system implemented by the year 2009 comprising electronic registration smart card, security featured number plates, and radio frequency identification devices.

Secretary Railways in his presentation said that two high-speed trains from Karachi to Lahore and Karachi-Lahore-Faisalabad were running daily resulting in reduced North-South time from 56 to 28 hours.

The prime minister also reviewed the status of restructuring of NHA on more professional lines, progress on North-South Expressway Corridor, realignment of NHA on corporate business lines, etc. and gave instructions to expedite progress on these issues.

He was informed that in the ports sector work was under process for rationalization of port entry charges based on international benchmarking. Steps were also underway to facilitate major shipping lines calling at ports and to develop ports master plan and business plan.