ISLAMABAD, May 11: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Friday accepted major demands of the business community, which would be introduced in the trade ordinance 2006 and rules 2007 in the next two weeks.

The prime minister on Friday chaired a meeting in which the government and the business community agreed on amendments to be incorporated in the Trade Organisations Act 2006 and Trade Organisations Laws and Rules, 2007.

Minister for Commerce Humayun Akhtar Khan; President FPCCI, Sheikh Tanveer Ahmed; vice-president FPCCI Punjab Azhar Saeed Butt; vice president FPCCI Sindh Zubair Tufail, Tariq Saeed and senior officials attended the meeting.

Talking to Dawn after the meeting Tariq Saeed said it was agreed that the current FPCCI president will remain for two years and the next president to be elected for the same period from Sindh. However, after the completion of this cycle, the new FPCCI president will be elected for one year and the cycle would continue for the rest of the years.

For the first time at the FPCCI request, he said, the government has also allowed the formation of traders’ chambers in the four provincial capitals so that the small traders could also come in the mainstream.

The prime minister has also extended the date for filing applications for renewal of licence to June 15, 2007, he added.

He said that the prime minister had also approved reduction in the licence fee for chambers to Rs30,000 from Rs0.3 million, and for women chambers Rs20,000 from Rs0.2 million and for associations Rs15,000 from 0.15 million. While the penalty charges were reduced to Rs0.1 million from Rs0.5 million.

He said the existing position of the law was that chambers and associations and the federation would have one year term and their presidents were to be elected by the general body not by the managing committee and the whole managing committee has to be retired every year.

He said the change that has been taken place was that all the chambers and associations would now have two-year term but every year 50 per cent of the managing committee would retire and every year there would be election of president and vice-president and they would be now elected by the managing committee.

As far as the FPCCI is concerned under the previous law it had two-year term and the entire managing committee was elected and the managing committee used to elect president and vice-president. Now in principle the terms of the managing committee of the FPCCI would become one year with effect from January 1, 2011.

The prime minister has also approved to reduce the number of minimum requirement of members for chambers to 150 from 300, for women chamber to 100 from 200 and associations to 100 from 150, respectively. However, this position would only remain for three years as renewal application would only be granted after having the required numbers.

He said that the prime minister has approved that all overseas chambers, including the Attock Chamber will be exempted from the minimum threshold of the members.

An official announcement issued here said that the prime minister said that the promulgation of new rules and laws for trade organisations will be a landmark step.