PESHAWAR, Oct 30: A workshop held here on Wednesday suggested change in the attitude of businessmen towards production and marketing of consumer products to capture markets in the emerging global trade scenario.

The one-day workshop on “Business challenges in the 21st century” was arranged by the Institute of Computer and Management Sciences at a local hotel.

“In the new global trade scenario, every nation is dependent on the other. Nobody is independent. Likewise, individuals are also dependent on each other,” said noted writer Faiez H. Seyal, who conducted the workshop.

He said according to the popular law of diversity of nature people had to rely on the skills, expertise and technologies of one another. He was of the view that without taking the help of Western technology and know-how, the developing countries were unable to compete in the world market.

This was a fact that Europe was the leading supplier of technology to the third world countries, which allowed preparation of consumers goods on competitive prices.

He said India cooperated with the US and Western countries in information technology some times ago and today it had a strong IT market. He said Pakistan realised the importance of this sector quite late and now it was far behind India.

Mr Seyal said that as many as 11 European countries had launched a single currency “euro” and had removed visa restrictions for their citizens, whereas the 56 Muslim countries were yet to create harmony among themselves due to their vested interests.

He said the unjust policies of the West and the US would force the Ummah to launch similar joint ventures in future when the World Trade Organization’s regulations were imposed in 2003.

He stressed the industrialists to produce products on lesser costs but maintain the quality so that they could compete with the foreign companies in the global trade market.

He referred to China which had been earning billions of dollars in international market through its low-priced and quality products. He said the Chinese goods sell like hot cakes in the US but the US government was unable to initiate action against China because its citizens were getting cheap goods.

Likewise, he said one could not force Pakistanis to buy one thing and reject the other. The consumers, he said had become aware of the changing market trends and they had become a critical buyer of the commodities. The manufacturers had to take care of consumers’ satisfaction and offer them quality goods on lower prices and only then they would be able to remain in the market.

He also said that downsizing or right-sizing was the requirement of the global trade system where the business concerns, departments and industries were required to be operated through lesser staff. He said that the governments of the US, Japan and UK had already carried out downsizing in their departments and the Pakistanis had to swallow the better pill to get ready for future challenges.

With the implementation of WTO’s regulations, the global trade barriers would be removed and there would be no control of respective governments on the exports and imports, the only way to remain in the business was to market high quality products on lower prices. Even the multinational firms operating across the world were under tremendous pressure from their parent companies to market low-priced quality products.

Mr Seyal said that failure was the best teacher and there was a dire need for our business people to learn from their failures.