November 11, 2007	Sunday	Shawwal 29, 1428

KARACHI, Nov 10: With the completion on Saturday of one full week since the promulgation of emergency, voices of concern from the international community are getting louder, bringing the local businesses under increasing pressure.

“The first victim of emergency has been business,” an investor in Karachi’s Export Processing Zone (EPZ) told Dawn. He said that two days after the promulgation of emergency, his distributor in New York had informed him that local retail outlets wanted him to explore alternative sources for supplies.

Hints of cancellation of orders from private business houses in Europe, the US and several other countries are causing sleepless nights to Pakistani manufacturers and exporters. They are trying to convince their buyers that the emergency is a temporary phase and with the restoration of the Constitution business will again start thriving in Pakistan.

“I have sent two detailed communications to my distributor over the last four days to convince him and his clients’ retail stores that the emergency has in no way adversely affected the production and routine business activities in Pakistan,” the EPZ investor said.

But he was sceptical whether he had been able to convince his business partners in the US.

Buyers in Europe and the US have become too sensitive about compliance by their suppliers and are not oblivious of the political situation in Pakistan. They are concerned about reports of changes in the higher judiciary, a virtual clampdown on the media and beating up of lawyers and newsmen by police.

The growing concern of foreign trading partners has also disturbed Pakistani businessmen. They maintain their production remained normal, but the future was a ‘big question mark’.

Exporters say that foreign buyers are now not ready to visit Pakistan as their governments have advised them against doing so.

Most of the 171 member companies of the Overseas Investors’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry hold their board meetings and invite senior executives from their principal offices between November and March to discuss expansion plans and related issues. The venues of such meetings have now been shifted to Dubai, Bangkok, Hong Kong or India or, in some cases, have been put off indefinitely.

“Pakistan is one of those countries where profit margin is very high, investors and business are assured of all safeguards and consumer is the least protected,’’ quipped a top executive of a local multinational company.

He conceded that his principals in Europe were pestering him daily for a situation report on Pakistan and the executives in more than 225 big and small multinational business houses were also sharing their perceptions with their principals abroad.

“But there is no question of any multinational leaving Pakistan,” he declared emphatically, but indicated that some of the companies might put on hold their expansion plans for some time.

Aziz Memon, a readymade garment exporter, said that his buyers were not ready to visit Pakistan. The October-December period is the time when manufacturers of consumer goods in Pakistan work overtime to service their orders for Christmas shopping in the US and Europe.

“They are making frantic calls through the internet and telephones on delivery schedule of their orders,” he said.

“Now more time is being spent to convince our buyers abroad that all is normal in Pakistan even during emergency,’’ another big exporter said. “We are sending two e-mails and making several telephone calls to our buyers every day,” he said.

The government too knows the economic implications of the emergency. Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad had invited on Thursday a team of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry to know their assessment of the situation.

“All is normal,’’ was the message conveyed to the governor, but the FPCCI team expressed concern about the worsening law and order situation. “The governor attributed lawlessness to frequent summoning of senior police officers by the higher judiciary,” one of the members of the FPCCI team said.

Whatever the businessmen say in public or convey to the government, they are definitely concerned about the uncertainties created by the emergency and express their fears in unguarded moments.

One such businessman challenged the government’s optimism on narrowing down of trade imbalance and current account deficit in the current fiscal year.