Pakistan is gaining investors’ attention: Dawood

Commerce adviser says impact of Covid-19 on FDI will not be very significant

ISLAMABAD: Due to the Covid-19 crisis, the world is facing a historic unprecedented situation which is affecting millions of human lives as well as the economic activities, said Adviser to Prime Minister on Commerce and Industries Abdul Razak Dawood.

In an interview with APP on Tuesday, he stressed that Covid-19 had slowed down the business activities all over the world including Pakistan.

“Pakistan witnessed foreign direct investment (FDI) of $2.3 billion during the first 10 months (July-April) of the current fiscal year compared to $1 billion in the same period of last fiscal year depicting an increase of 126.8%,” he said. “Currently, the country is rapidly gaining investors’ attention for a variety of reasons.”

The World Bank highlighted that global investment was expected to drop by almost 40% in 2020 and 2021 and the growing economies of developing countries are likely to be worst hit by the pandemic with regard to low FDI, he underlined.

However, as per the recent statistics issued by the State Bank of Pakistan, the negative impact of Covid-19 on FDI in Pakistan would not be very significant, he said.

He recalled that the World Bank had also projected a 23% decline in remittances for Pakistan translating to about $17 billion for 2020 compared to a total of $22.5 billion in 2019 due to the economic crisis emerging from the pandemic and lockdowns in most cities abroad.

However, despite these projections, the adviser held the view that things could be turned around with carefully crafted strategies and searching for new avenues in untapped areas.

“Prime Minister Imran Khan is himself leading the reforms to facilitate investors and to ensure ease of doing business in the country,” he said. “Recently, Pakistan has announced transformational visa reforms by introducing e-visa facilities to most of the countries.”

Replying to a question, he said that with current positive developments and government’s focus on inviting private investment in key sectors, Pakistan’s bilateral ties with the rest of the world were shifting from transactional relationships to mutually beneficial economic partnerships.

The adviser added that most of the economies were going through recession which was evident from the fact that almost 80 countries have called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for support.  

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2020.

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