ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan has directed the Commerce Division to finalise three strategic policy documents ahead of Dec 31, a senior official told Dawn on Monday.

The direction from the premier comes at a time when the Commerce Division has placed these draft policies on back burner for the past many months and has yet to give final shape for their implementation.

The official said the premier has asked the division to finalise a draft five years trade policy for 2019-24 with a string of measures to enhance export competitiveness and productivity of the domestic industries.

The other two policies, National Tariff Policy and Trade Related Investment Framework, will also be made ready for approval of the cabinet latest by end of December.

Since Oct 2017, the Commerce Division has received more than 1,000 proposals to be considered for inclusion for the first draft of the five-year Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF).

The new proposed policy will revolve around eight pillars – institutional strengthening, trade promotion and branding, trade facilitation, marketing access and regional connectivity, services strategy, product development, compliance and gender mainstreaming.

The proposed STPF will include three policy initiatives for short, medium and long terms. In short term, measures will be taken for recovering export loss by increasing competitiveness. In medium term, several measures will be taken for leveraging strength of existing sectors, attract export oriented investment, and encourage product sophistication. In long term, the focus will be on structural reforms for product diversification into innovation based sectors.

Since 2009, the government has announced three STPF but most part of these policies remained unimplemented. The export target announced in these policies was also not materialised.

Under the draft National Tariff Policy, it will be proposed reduce duty on tariff lines, comprising raw materials and machinery for export oriented industries. It will be proposed to eliminate duty on raw materials in a phase wise with a longer period for those raw materials produced locally.

The duty will be done away with those raw materials which were not locally produced. The draft policy was also shared with all chambers and association and solicited feedback.

The Commerce Division has also drafted Trade Related Investment Framework and shared with the relevant stakeholders. The document provides a comprehensive framework to attract investment in export-oriented sectors and suggested measures to remove all bottlenecks hindering investments.

The cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to Pakistan were recorded at $10 billion in the last five years out of which 81 per cent was concentrated in non-manufacturing sectors like power, oil and gas, construction, financial business, communication IT and telecom, transport and trade.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2018