FAISALABAD: Adviser to the Prime Minister on Commerce and Investment Abdul Razak Dawood on Saturday said that after excelling in textiles, Faisalabad is ready to lead the national economy with phenomenal growth in conventional and emerging industrial sectors.

In his address on the second day of the Pakistan Economic Conference (PEC) 2022 organised by the Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Mr Dawood appreciated the dynamism and entrepreneurship of the city. “The city was filled with the monotonous sound of khat, khat from the power looms in 1960s when I visited this city for the first time,” he said.

“However, when I revisited Faisalabad in 2019, the industrial sector was facing closure but due to viable policies of the government, the city regained a new momentum. The industrial sector is working with full capacity and most of units are not getting enough skilled workers,” he added.

“A new era of progress and prosperity is knocking at Faisalabad’s doorsteps as the business community was now contemplating to switch over to agriculture, IT, online businesses and a long chain of other sectors instead of depending on the textile alone,” the adviser added.

He said that Pakistan had inked Preferential Trade Agreements with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan which would provide access to Pakistani exporters to a huge market of 72 million individuals in landlocked Central Asian states.

He also underlined the importance of female entrepreneurs, noting that Pakistan could not make progress by isolating the women from the national economy.

He also acknowledged the importance of IT sector and said that it had recorded 47 per cent record growth during this year. “This sector is totally tax-free and our youth must exploit its potential not only to earn profit for themselves but also fetch precious foreign exchange for the country without any major investment,” he added.

He said that target of IT exports had been fixed at $3.7 billion dollars and hoped that it would be achieved very easily because of the keen interests taken by youngsters in this field.

In his address at the PEC-2022, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib said continuity of policies is imperative for sustained economic growth. “The business community must openly support Prime Minister Imran Khan for successfully steering the country from economic crisis even in the face of corona challenge,” Mr Habib said.

“Pakistan had attained 5pc growth rate only because of prudent and viable policies of the government. However, sustainability of the growth was important and in this connection, private sector had to play its role,” he added.

“We are proud that the first textile policy, formulated by the business community, was adopted by the PTI government. We tried our best to correct the imbalances and disparity between the industrial sector of different provinces,” the minister further said.

A session on IT was also held at the PEC-2022. It was moderated by BizTech Consulting Vietnam CTO Dr Rizwan Khan while Jaffar Business Systems CEO Veqarul Islam was the keynote speaker.

PIAIC CEO Zia Khan, Fishry.com Cofounder Badar Khushnood, Pakistan Blockchain Institute & AnZ Technologies Founder & CEO Ahmad Manzoor, Director & Co-Founder Rholab and Asanbuy.pk Noman Chandna and freelancer Javaria Siddique were among the speakers and panelists in this session.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2022