KARACHI, March 8: President American Business Council (ABC) Zubyr Soomro said on Wednesday that the Intellectual Property Right (IPR) was the main topic of discussions during the meeting of US President George W. Bush with a select group of business leaders and NGOs in Islamabad last week.

He told Dawn on Wednesday that the patent infringements law was specifically discussed during the meeting. The law excludes the pharma industry. The meeting was attended by ten top Pakistani businessmen.

He added that while the Patents Ordinance of 2000 was, by and large, compliant with TRIPS, but, unfortunately, much of this was undone by the Patents Amendment Ordinance of 2002. This does not provide even the minimum protection available under the Patent Act of 1911. There is, thus a clear need to restore the Patent Ordinance of 2000.

On data exclusivity, the ABC president said that Pakistan is also not compliant with TRIPS (Article 39.3) and there is still no law to protect the exclusivity of confidential data relating to pharma, agriculture and chemical products submitted to the government to get marketing authorization.

He said he had informed President Bush that the Pakistani government had supported business on the issue by setting up the Intellectual Property Organisation (IPO) and that some progress had been made on copyrights through enforcement actions. “However, we all know that on IPR we have a long way to go,” he said.

“President Bush appeared well informed on the subject and recognized the impact it would have on increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) for Pakistan,” Zubyr Soomro said.

To a query why law and order situation was not raised when the ABC members and even the investors abroad had reservation on this issue, he said, “We did not raise the law and order issue with the US president as the subject was already covered by many others and we have been addressing it with the government here.”

On other issues discussed with President Bush, he said “We talked about the considerable progress made by the economy and how businesses overall, including ABC members, had benefited from this over the last five to six years. We also mentioned deregulation and privatization, both of which had expanded the domestic market for investors,” he added.

The ABC president said that the issue of low FDI from America was also discussed in the meeting. It was observed that Pakistan’s FDI had grown but was still at low level and a good portion of this related to the privatization proceeds and sale of cellular telecom licenses.

To build a strong and sustained flow a strengthened and substantive IPR framework is necessary accompanied with the support of an efficient judicial system, he added.

To a query that Mr Bush must have given some guidelines and suggestions to the ABC as it represents 60 companies here, Zubyr said “George Bush did encourage the ABC to act as a bridge for the potential US investors.”

The US Investors have put in over 1$ billion into Pakistan and it remains the single largest country component of FDI received by the country. There is thus no reluctance on the part of US investors, we just need to attract much more, he said adding that in fact ABC’s recent survey indicated that 67 per cent of council’s members had planned significant increase in investment in Pakistan over the next twelve months.

Giving an overall view on Bush’s visit to Pakistan as compared to India, where so many agreements were signed, the ABC president said, “I believe there was an agreement signed relating to the pre-inspection of containers for exports to the US (Container Security Initiative). There has been talk of the conclusion of a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) which could enhance Pakistan’s position in terms of attracting serious FDI but I believe this was not tied up.”