April 11, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22, 1428

ISLAMABAD, April 10: The government plans to offer new fiscal and policy incentives to promote the much-needed public private partnership in energy, roads, airports, ports and shipping, water and sewerage sectors.

“Our longer term strategy seeks to offer both fiscal and policy incentives to encourage public private partnership in various fields, including energy, shipping, airports and roads,” Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Dr Akram Sheikh told Dawn on Tuesday.

“We need to have all the missing links of the chain to ensure increased public private investment in major economic fields,” he said adding that the Planning Commission has proposed an integrated and holistic approach to encourage the greater public and private partnership.

Responding to a question, he said immediately after the presentation of the new budget in June this year, detailed exercise will be conducted to gauge as to how much the federal government could contribute towards its public sector in terms of financial resources and other facilities. This funding, he pointed out, will, off course, be very substantive and could be in billions of rupees.

At the same time, Dr Sheikh said, it would be seen how much the private sector could invest in many new areas of the economy. He agreed the government will have to create better conditions to attract the private sector to have some meaningful partnership with the public sector.

The deputy chairman then referred to his commission's 2030-vision, which is expected to be approved by the National Economic Council (NEC) in its next meeting to be held within this month.

The vision, he said, maintains that it is necessary to restructure the whole public sector so that it can facilitate the private sector and plays its role efficiently and in a natural fashion.

To a question, Dr Sheikh said that the private sector had already its strong and successful presence in education and health, though it is expensive and elitist. The state must continue to improve and expand provision of these basic services to the citizens.

To another question he said that Pakistan must quickly put in place the infrastructure and instruments for matching of trans-national skills to deal with the emergence of 25 hours and 7-day working society and to cater for relocation of manufacturing and design from the developed economies.

In Pakistan with low domestic savings (16 per cent of GDP) foreign investment will be crucial. Attracting FDI would require comprehensive set of measures, including minimising the risks and reducing the cost of doing business.

Pakistan is doing reasonably well in terms of cost of doing business and was ranked at 74 out of 175 countries by the World Bank.

The vision pointed out that there were some major constraints in logistic chain, including roads, railways, ports, airports and trade facilitation. “With present infrastructure, it will not be possible to expect our enterprises to become part of, and players, in the international supply chain, or to facilitate new investments in industry, agriculture and services.

It also said that 80 per cent of the future economic growth of Pakistan will take place in its urban areas, particularly the mega-cities and other large urban centres. “Our urban centres must be planned within the framework of strategic master plans, incorporating economic parameters for efficiency gains to make our cities competitive in the global and regional context”.

The development of urban infrastructure would ensure that the location of business and commerce is fully facilitated.