He said this while speaking to businessmen and industrialists at Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) building whose foundation stone was laid by Mahatma Gandhi in 1934.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a vision to transform South Asia where “we move from poverty to prosperity and from ignorance to a knowledge-based society with the cooperation of all our neighbours,” he said.
“We recorded a compound growth of 8.6 per cent in the last five years. Strong economic growth, more importantly with confidence in future prosperity, has taken our GDP to over $1 trillion from $400 billion in a decade,” Sabharwal said while pointing out India’s impressive achievement.
Though global downturn did have an impact on the Indian economy, “we have weathered it well with 6.7 per cent and 7.2 per cent growth in fiscal year 2008-09 and 2009-10 respectively and now we hope to return to nine per cent growth in this financial year,” he added.
India, the fastest growing economy of the region, has the potential to become a growth opportunity for all its neighbours but unfortunately Saarc countries are more integrated with the world than their neighbouring countries, he said.
Presently, annual trade between Pakistan and India is around $2 billion which has a potential to grow to $10 billion. “It is untrue that the Pakistani manufacturing sector will become uncompetitive once its markets are opened up to India. When Pakistan can compete with Indian exports in the international markets, they can do so in their domestic markets as well,” he stressed.
President KCCI Abdul Majid Haji Muhammad and former KCCI president Anjum Nisar commented though India and Pakistan have tremendous potential of economic collaboration, both have been unable to exploit the opportunities.
“Unfortunately, India and Pakistan stand where they were in 2004 and both are still talking about the similar targets they were targeting six to seven years ago,” Nisar said.
Both countries are committed to opening bank branches, but that was delayed because of the trust deficit between the two countries, said High Commissioner Sabharwal.
“I assure you that any move from Pakistan to open up trade will find a positive Indian response. Businessmen need to create the situation and then only the governments facilitate,” he said, adding “I have no doubt that businessmen from both sides are capable of doing so.”
Published in the Express Tribune, June 10th, 2010.
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