ISLAMABAD April 12: Experts have urged policy-makers to review the trade policy framework to bridge the gap in its formulation and implementation to translate it into poverty reduction and human development.

They were speaking at a seminar on “mainstreaming development issues in Pakistan’s trade policies” here on Saturday. It was jointly organised by Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) and Foreign Trade Institute of Pakistan (FTIP).

Former State Bank Governor Dr Ishrat Husain has said that trade had become a powerful mean for a country’s economic and social development. Referring to the annual report of the Karachi-based social policy and development centre (SPDC), he said that it provided a proof that trade and development were interlinked.

Citing success story of China, he said that through promotion in exports Beijing had reduced poverty to a great level during the last few years. He called for promoting knowledge-based education to excel in engineering and technology to earn the fruits of comparative advantages, adding that the production cycle changes with reaping the benefits of comparative advantage.

Dr Husain advised Pakistanis to move in IT direction like Indians and get benefit from services sector, which was 53 per cent of our economy. He urged the host organisations to concentrate on empirical research.

Dr Sohail Jehangir Malik of Innovative Development Strategy (Pvt) Ltd urged the government to review the entire policy framework to integrate different aspects of trade, development and investment.

He said that there was a need to bridge the gap between policies and their implementation. He regretted that the existing trade policy has become hostage to fiscal and monitoring space while the state of domestic commerce was extremely poor.

Dr Abid Suleri of SDPI observed that Nairobi-based United Nations Conference on Trade and Development had no powers to implement the decisions and Pakistan along with other developing countries should adopt a collective position instead of symbolic position in the Unctad. He said that our national policies needed genuine reassessment, development of competitiveness and parallel governance mechanisms to support the high growth.

KASB Bank Chairman H.U. Baig urged that growth had to be supported by other policies and mechanisms, in addition to a strong implementation and coordination mechanism in place for policies. He also suggested formation of a cabinet coordination committee for this purpose.

FTIP Director General Dr Safdar Sohail asked for effective coordination and implementation mechanisms to use the trade policy for the development.

Dr Sajjad Akhtar suggested to the government to encourage investment in competitiveness, adopt strategic trade policies, restore a focus on agriculture, combat jobless growth, prepare a new tax regime, maintain stable exchange rates and persist with multilateralism and cooperation with neighbours to mainstream the development with the trade policy of Pakistan.

Syed Hasan Javed and Syed Irtiqa Ahmed Zaidi shared Pakistan’s perspective and positions in Unctad.

Teepu Sultan of TDAP differed with the perception whether there existed any nexus between trade and development, adding that the role of Unctad should be the capacity-building, human development and food security of the member countries than to support export-oriented policies.