ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Commerce has come up with an ambitious plan to increase country’s exports to as high as $37 billion in the next five years, Dawn has learned from knowledgeable sources.

The draft on Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF) 2020-25 was shared with Prime Minister Imran Khan to seek his feedback before presenting it in front of the federal cabinet for approval.

“We have shared the policy a couple of weeks ago,” a source in the ministry told Dawn.

Under the policy, a three-tier institutional mechanism is proposed for the resolution of sector-specific problems. It is believed that new mechanisms will help to a large extent in facilitating exporters to overcome their problems.

A high power board will be established under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister. The board will meet twice a year to approve policies for promotion of exports from the country.

Other members of the board will include finance ministers, commerce, food security, energy, and power divisions, central bank governor and other top officials of the relevant ministries.

At the commerce ministry level, an executive committee will be established under the chairmanship of commerce minister. The relevant federal secretaries and Federal Board of Revenue chairman will be members of the committee.

The committee will look into the day-to-day and sectoral issues for resolution and ensure implementation of recommendations. The executive committee will meet monthly in order to ensure the implementation of policy measures.

In the third tier, it has been proposed to constitute 12 to 16 sector-specific councils/boards. These councils will review sectors and suggest policy as well as incentives for the promotion of products as well as its subsequent exports from the country.

The recommendations of the council will first be submitted to the executive council for approval and implementation. However, these proposals can be taken up at the executive board level in case of high-level decisions.

It will be the first STPF, which will focus on establishing an institutional mechanism instead of one-time subsidies for the sectors. The private sector will be involved in all decisions especially having representation from the private sectors in the councils.

Under the STPF 2020-25, textile, leather, surgical and sports goods, carpet, rice, and cutlery have been included along with non-formal and development sectors like engineering goods, pharmaceuticals, auto parts, process food and beverages, footwear, gem and jewellery, chemicals, meat and poultry, seafood, marble, and granite. The policy will focus on increasing exports of these sectors.

In the last decade, the Commerce Division had notified three STPFs: in 2009-12, 2012-15, and 2015-18. But none of these were successfully implemented to achieve the desired objectives due to various reasons. Moreover, the policies also failed to alter the export paradigm over the period.

The 2009-10 STPF failed mainly due to mismanagement, whereas the 2012-15 framework suffered amid government’s failure to release the allotted funds. Meanwhile, the 2015-18 policy was announced after a delay of more than nine months and suffered from a financial crunch as the government only released Rs500 million of the total budget of Rs20 billion leading to poor implementation.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2020