KARACHI: World Bank (WB) Country Director Patchamuthu Illango has said that Pakistan needs to create two to three million new jobs every year, which would require 8 per cent economic growth per annum.

He was speaking at the ‘Sindh Doing Business Reforms’ exhibition organised by the Sindh Board of Investment (SBI) on Thursday.

On the occasion, Mr Illango said Pakistan needed significant investment from the private sector and the World Bank was helping the government make a business-friendly environment.

He said various reforms were being taken in Sindh and Punjab which would improve the future investment scenario and benefit the private sector and the government.

Addressing the exhibition participants, SBI Chairperson Naheed Memon said: “We are always compared with Punjab. We are not only doing better when it comes to reforms; we are doing it quicker. Karachi is a bigger city with more complicated challenges.”

The Doing Business Reforms, she said, were part of the provincial government’s aim to transform the regulatory environment to help make Sindh the next business powerhouse.

These efforts are part of a larger plan developed to introduce the business reforms at federal and provincial levels, she added.

Counting on various reforms, SBI chief Naheed Memon said the procedures of four government departments had been simplified while procedures for eight more departments would be made simple in future.

The Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA), she said, had eased out the procedure for the approval and issuance of construction permits for residential houses and non-obnoxious warehouses (Category-I buildings).

She added that the requirement of interdepartmental no-objection certificates (NOCs), and others departments — Karachi Water and Sewerage Board, Sindh Environment Protection Agency, and Sindh’s Excise and Taxation department — were waived off.

The procedures and the timeline for approvals of construction permits for residential houses and non-obnoxious warehouses had been revisited.

Ms Memon said that the SEPA recently de-notified the requirement for environmental approval for nine types of projects.

She said reforms introduced by the Sindh Board of Revenue would help make registering property quicker and easier than before. The overall time required to register property in Karachi had been reduced from 208 days to just 17 days, said Ms Memon.

President of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), Mufassar Malik, said the days required to register for professional tax with the excise and taxation department, SESSI, EOBI and district labour department should be reduced to one to two days from two to four weeks.

Pakistan’s Doing Business ranking had slipped to 147 from 144 in 2018 due to the business environment of Karachi, he regretted.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2018