April 04, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 15, 1428

LAHORE, April 3: The Punjab government is launching a series of consultative workshops from the third week of this month as part of its programme to draw up a Private Sector Development Strategy (PSDS), which aims at suggesting ways to reduce the cost of doing business in the province as well as to ease the existing regulatory regime governing the industry.

The PSDS is being devised under the banner of the $500 million Punjab Resource Management Programme (PRMP).

Launched in 2003, the PRMP is being funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to help the Punjab government undertake critical governance, financial and budgetary reforms in the province.

“In all, we plan to hold four workshops to consult the stakeholders (the business community) about the problems and difficulties they have been facing in doing business,” a PRMP official told this reporter on Tuesday.

“These workshops will discuss in details the regulatory framework – both federal and provincial laws, and other factors constraining the development of business in the province,” he said.

The official said the PRMP would focus on the small and medium enterprises in the process of formulating the private sector development strategy.

“The small and medium size businesses face problems which are different from the bigger ones. Besides, they cannot cope with their problems because of lack of resources, capacity, skills and other constraints,” he said.

The official said the strategy for development of private sector in the province was being drawn up in line with the government’s policy to reduce poverty through creation of one million jobs each year in the private sector.

“The private sector, especially the small and medium sectors, is the biggest provider of jobs anywhere in the world. It is the government’s stated policy to facilitate the private sector by removing the legal and other snags in doing business. This can be done by easing the regulatory regime obstructing growth and expansion of the private sector, especially the smaller businesses, and helping it address the social, environmental and other compliance issues so that the province can be integrated into the global economy,” he said.

The private sector development strategy, the official said, would chart the future course of action for the provincial government for slashing the cost of doing business, easing regulatory regime (labour and other laws), building managerial capacity of the private sector and improving its efficiency.

He said the proposed series of workshops starting from April 16 would culminate in a final consultation scheduled to be held in Lahore.

“The final consultation will be attended by all stakeholders – the businessmen, the officials from the federal and provincial departments concerned, etc, to mull over the issues and problems constraining the development of private sector and make recommendations for addressing them,” he said.