As part of “Look at African Policy” to achieve geographical diversification of exports, Pakistan-Africa Trade development conference scheduled for 30-31 January in Nairobi, Kenya supported by Ministry of Commerce
Abdul Razak Dawood, the Prime Minister for Commerce, Textile, Industry & Production and Investment, declared that he will be presenting a strategic export development framework which will open new avenues for enhancement of Pakistan’s trade with Africa. Our trade policy will focus on pursuing an export-led growth strategy, including facilitating exporters as every country has its own strategy. Incentives must be provided to the value-added sectors and as far as product diversification is concerned, we must diversify our products away from the 5 export sectors. Tariff rationalization is very important if industrial growth is the target. The government is regularly meeting with each sector before a strategy for tariff rationalization will be finalized. The cabinet has approved the e-commerce policy under which we are placing far greater focus on the services side which includes arrangement of payments, ease of payments through the IT sector and services in general. Once Ministry of Commerce finalizes the strategy, the Ministry of Information Technology will come up with a plan to implement it together with the State Bank of Pakistan, providing guidance on methodology.
He further added that All this time we have been concentrating on products; things we produced, we have not concentrated on services. Now, we are looking at services, including information technology (IT), insurance, consultancy, engineering services, shipping etc.
