The Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI)’s Regional Standing Committee Chairman on Horticulture Exports Ahmad Jawad said that even though vision-2025 targets hold a six-fold increase in exports, from $25 billion in 2014 to $150 billion by 2025, but it remains connected a with large scope to trade with the traditional and new markets such as the European Union, whose GSP+ offers untapped potential to complete the time period with no appropriate outcome from that facility as well as newer markets such as Korea and CIS states.
Talking to newsmen on Saturday, Jawad told after spending one long year, the government managed to frame the Strategic Trade Policy Framework 2015-18, but its implementation poses significant challenges, particularly the achievement of over-ambitious $35 billion export target by 2018.
The policy framework, announced last year in the first quarter, had faced bureaucratic hurdles that wasted precious time that should otherwise have been used to focus efforts on propelling the country’s falling exports, he added.
During the 2015-16 budget, the finance ministry had allocated Rs6 billion for implementing the policy framework in the first year out of the total budget of Rs20 billion. However, that the amount remained unutilised.
This showed that the government wasted an entire year in preparing the policy document as its draft remained unattended to at the Prime Minister’s Secretariat for six months. An official said it was meaningless to keep the policy draft at the PM Secretariat for such a long time as nothing was changed and the same document was returned.
Unnecessarily delay can also be gauged from the fact that the commerce ministry and the law ministry took a month to issue import and export orders after unveiling trade policy, and they have not yet notified the subsidies.
The two shift the blame on each other, as the commerce ministry insisted that it had immediately sent draft notifications to the law ministry for vetting, but the latter argued that the drafts were poorly prepared and were full of mistakes that required time to rectify.
Whatever the reasons were, the exports were continuously falling which had an adverse effect on the economic growth of the country. The policy itself has many loopholes and shortcomings. Foremost among them is its apparent excessive focus on the manufacturing industry, particularly on producers of fans, cutlery, sports goods and leather.
Before the policy announcement, it was expected that a comprehensive strategy would be adopted for high-value agricultural products including perishable goods, which were more or less ignored with no effective mechanism except for wheat, cotton, rice and sugar.
Jawad also told the horticulture sector has a significant export potential, particularly off-season fruits and vegetables that have a high demand in certain regional markets. There is a need to adopt latest technology for enhancing exports of these high-value products. Pakistan has certain geographical advantages and it is considered a backyard farm of the Central Asian States and the Middle East with remarkable potential for export of agriculture products.
Moreover, Pakistan’s organic and Halal food could also make inroads into global markets, but here again, no concrete measures have been taken. However, it was a positive sign that as a short-term strategy the policy has identified certain goods including horticulture products, meat and basmati rice, but these should meet international packaging and safety standards and practical incentives which were not given in the recent exporter’s incentive package.
Irrespective of what is missing in the policy, historically the release of funds for implementation has always been a challenge and it seems that this policy will be no different.
In addition to this, questions are being raised about the institutional capacity to execute the policy as the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) and its CEO doesn’t have the capacity to promote exports beyond traditional products, he said.
He mentioned the example of the lethargic approach is the import of a vapour heat treatment plant from Japan worth over $2 million some three years ago, but it has been lying at the Karachi Expo Centre since then, but no step has been taken to utilise the plant.
Similarly, the Pakistan Horticulture Development and Export Company (PHDEC) have also not been able to perform satisfactorily because of the absence of its permanent CEO and scarcity of technical staff and financial resources which are yet to be finalised.
“The targets set in the trade policy framework could be achieved if the government takes prompt administrative and financial measures in addition to adopting new technology for value addition to traditional exports and appoint competent heads on government trade development bodies who at least know the jargons of international trade”, Jawad said
