LAHORE
The business community has expressed grave concern regarding the news of closure of Engineering Development Board (EDB) and has termed it a bad proposal. According to them, the government should shelve the idea for the sake of engineering sector of Pakistan.
LCCI Acting President Amjad Ali Jawa and Vice President Muhammad Nasir Hameed Khan said that reportedly this decision has been taken without taking the stakeholders on board. They said that Engineering Development Board is playing a fundamental role in promotion of engineering sector.
“EDB was established to oversee multiple areas related to the engineering sector. An important area where EDB has contributed the most is the Automobile Sector. It oversees the implementation of the Auto Policy, based on predefined policy document guidelines,” they said.
They added, “It supports the vendor industry by handling various SRO’s, and by assuring local content enhancement and curtailment of rollback, based on the government’s policy guidelines.”
They said that closure and shifting the responsibility of EDB, will derail the engineering industry, especially the auto sector. It will lead to inefficiency in the government, and lack of expertise would further complicate the situation, leading to stoppage of investments in Auto Sector, especially to the Vending Sector.
They recommended that proposal of disbandment of EDB should be taken back immediately as it would give a bad message to the foreign investors. To improve the circumstances, a professional CEO EDB should be appointed, based on capability to handle such an organization. They said that closure of an institution is not a solution to the problems. Government should take corrective to overcome the loopholes.
EDB had made an internal reorganization and also made an operation plan by creating four operational groups i.e. Tariff group, Policy development Group, Sector development Group and Business Development Group with the objective to develop growth strategies for engineering sub-sectors and integrate Pakistan’s engineering sector with global markets as well as to keep focus on tariff rationalization, indigenization, deletion monitoring and vendor development, Giving international exposure to industry, handholding of industry, creating comprehensive databank of industry and benchmarking & training.
EDB has launched a comprehensive Industrial Research Program (IRP) with the collaboration of academia to promote R&D activities in the industry by engaging R&D potential existing with the local universities.
The program aims to address Industry’s technical issues pertaining to product design/development, production processes and to foster much-needed innovation in the industry to enhance competitiveness of the industrial sector.
Under IRP, Industry entrepreneurs on individual or collective basis indicate their technical problems/areas where research is required. The problem is shared with researchers/ scholars of various universities for designing /developing indigenous solution. The case is finally allotted to the research team on competitive basis. Higher Education Commission has shown its willingness to fund these research projects to certain extent but no formal agreement has yet been signed.
EDB had taken on board a team of 992 professors, scientists, technologists, researchers (Ph.D and M. Phil) from 23 engineering universities in 308 fields to address the product and production problems. These fields cover almost all products related to engineering, applied physics and applied chemistry.
