Private sector urged to create jobs

Punjab finance minister tells businessmen govt is working on policies for growth

LAHORE:

The public sector does not have the required space to provide jobs to young Pakistanis and this flow has to be absorbed by the private sector of Pakistan, said Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Hashim Jawan Bakht.

Shedding light on the system the government is trying to fix, he stated, “One of the serious flaws in the system is the short-term policies, as all polices were made on a short-term basis for gaining political mileage by different political parties.”

Speaking to the stakeholders of the business community at an event organised by the American Business Forum, the minister said, “Such policies or goals created growth spurts in different tenures but for a shorter period and harmed the country’s economy in the longer-term.”

“We are trying to fix such issues since the last two years due to which the take-off was slow but from this point onwards you will not observe the entire system choking,” Hashim added.

However, majority of the business community was still not satisfied with the government’s way of operating. Executives of different local and foreign companies raised issues before the provincial finance minister, most of which were related to consistency of policies, taxation, agriculture and matters related to social security and other development departments of the provincial government.

Hashim informed the business community that both federal and provincial governments are still struggling to manage their finances and they are under a huge burden of debt repayments and payments of salaries and pensions.

The most populated province of Pakistan spends almost three-fourth of its income on salaries and pensions. Bakht said that they were trying to give the private sector a chance to collaborate and work with the public sector under public-private partnership programmes.

“We see a lot of resistance in increasing our tax base, as a result, our resources are limited, however, the private sector is the breathing space where resources are available and more jobs can be created,” he pointed out.

“We have managed to improve our position on the Ease of Doing Business index to 108 globally, but this is still not enough, we are trying to further automate different departments and giving guarantees to banks for lending to different sectors other than governments,” he said.

Previously, banks were not motivated enough to lend to small and medium businesses but now things are changing.

“We are now giving loss guarantee to banks for the first time in history and by doing so we have taken a risk,” he said, adding, “We are hoping that once banks start lending to other sectors such as small and medium enterprises then they will be in a comfortable position and will start lending more, but for that, the government itself has to start borrowing less from banks.”

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2020.

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