Islamabad : Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) leading a delegation held a meeting with Atif R. Bokhari, Minister of State/Chairman, Board of Investment and discussed with him various options for promoting local and foreign investment in the country. Fatma Azim Senior Vice President ICCI, Umar Hussain, Omais Khattak and Usman Khalid Executive Members ICCI were in the delegation. Fareena Mazhar Secretary, Mukarram Jah Anwar Executive Director General, Muhammad Khashih ur Rehman Executive Director General, Jamil Ahmed Qureshi Director General and Suriya Jamal Director General, BOI were also present in the meeting.
Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan stressed that BOI should set up a one window facility as early as possible to facilitate the investors in making investment in Pakistan. He said that Pakistan has tremendous potential for investment in various sectors of its economy including tourism, hospitality, infrastructure development and others, however, lengthy business registration processes, complicated taxation regime, inconsistent policies, insufficient policy reforms and red tapeism in the government departments were the major hurdles for local and foreign investors. He emphasized that BOI should work with relevant departments to address these issues in order to facilitate the growth of investment in the country. He said that BOI and other government departments should take major chambers of commerce on board during policy making processes that would help in making more business friendly policies and promoting business and investment activities in the country.
Fatma Azim Senior Vice President ICCI, Umar Hussain, Omais Khattak and Usman Khalid Executive Members ICCI also offered useful proposals for investment promotion. They said that many foreign diplomats and delegations used to visit ICCI and other chambers, therefore, BOI should regularly share updated information with chambers about potential areas of investment in the country that would be helpful in attracting more FDI to Pakistan. They said that further cut in policy interest rate, reduction in high tax rates, simplification of taxation system, easy allocation of land and prompt provision of utility services would increase local and foreign investment in the country and urged that the government should work on these lines.
Addressing the ICCI delegation, Atif R. Bokhari, Minister of State/Chairman BOI said that his organization was taking many initiatives to promote ease of doing investment in Pakistan. He said that the government had launched Pakistan Regulatory Modernization Initiative (PRMI) and BOI was designated as lead agency for its implementation. He hoped that this initiative would reduce compliance costs of businesses and improve the regulatory regime for them as well. He said that ICCI should develop a sector-wise list of major issues/hindrances in way of the investment and share the same with BOI so that efforts could be made to address them for facilitation of business and investment activities. He said that Mukarram Jah Anwar Executive Director General BOI would work as focal person with ICCI for strong liaison between both sides in order to make joint efforts for investment promotion. Fareena Mazhar, Secretary BOI and other members of BOI delegation also spoke at the occasion and assured that BOI would keep the private sector in loop on major initiatives for investment promotion.