ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday reiterated that his Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government was striving hard to provide all possible facilities to businessmen in order to accelerate the economic activity in the country.

“The government is giving top priority to ease of doing business as it is a must for accelerating economic activity,” the prime minister said while talking to a delegation of leading industrialists and businessmen here at the Prime Minister Office.

The government was focusing on generating business activity as it would create employment opportunities and reduce poverty, he added.

Mr Khan invited industrialists and businessmen to present their proposals to the government for improving the country’s economy. “The process of policy and planning to bring improvement in the economy would be taken forward in accordance with the proposals,” he said.

The business and traders community presented a number of proposals to the government for the promotion of investment, tax revenue increase, institutional reforms, expansion of tax net, annual budget preparation, capacity building and creating job opportunities.

The meeting deliberated upon various proposals presented by the business community.

The prime minister directed his cabinet members and advisers to review those proposals and continue the consultation process with the business community.

He said the government would continue the consultation process in all sectors of the economy and meetings with members of the business community would be held regularly.

The business community expressed their full confidence in the government’s economic policies and lauded the economic team of the government for its efforts to better the economy.

The meeting was attended, among others, by Mian Mohammad Manshsa, Bashir Ali Mohammad, Ali Habib, Shahid Hussain, Khalil Sattar, Saqib Shirazi, Shahid Abdullah, Tariq Sehgal, Arif Habib, Musaddaq Zulqarnain and Sikandar Mustafa.

Minister for Planning and Development Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Minister for Maritime

Ali Haider Zaidi, Adviser to the PM on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Adviser on Trade Abdur Razak Dawood, Adviser on Institutional Reforms Dr Ishrat Hussain and Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue Syed Shabbar Zaidi were also present at the meeting.

The PTI-led government has been meeting several local and international business community members and investors to attract investments in the country. Earlier, Hafeez Shaikh addressed the first Central Asia Capital Regional Economic Cooperation (Carec) Capital Market Regulators

Forum in Islamabad, where he said that the government was working hard to ease doing business in the country by providing maximum facilities to local and international investors.

“We are working hard on ease of doing business and the numbers of businesses are gradually improving,” he said.

He invited the investors to take benefit of the opportunities offered by the government, saying they would feel comfortable while doing business here.

Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2019