Daily Times reported that Engineering Development Board is striving to achieve competitiveness and efficiency improvement of industry through tariff rationalization.
Mr Asad Elahi CEO of EDB said in a presentation given in Chairmen Conference arranged by the Ministry of Industries and Production and chaired by Mr Mian Manzoor Ahmad Wattoo minister for industries and production that other objectives of the EDB is reducing cost of doing business and imports, encouraging local production and consumption of locally manufactured goods, review of procedures and SRO’s for customs duty, sales tax, withholding tax and federal excise for making them user friendly, market expansion and export enhancement through reducing input cost and redressal of under invoicing, smuggling miss declaration and delay in refunds etc.
He gave the details of this exercise done for the current budget including management of SROs. He added that EDB has introduced one customs system with the assistance of FBR/PRAL, under which all imports by auto sector would be through online entry and only items authorized by the EDB would be importable.
Mr Elahi said that the EDB would have access to this system for the year round for monitoring of the tariff based system. It has become operational with the start of current budget. In the next stage sales tax payments/products to be sold would be incorporated. Referring to policy initiatives taken under Auto Industry Development Programme, he listed 5 years pre announced tariff, attracting large investments, development of technologies, HRD, Standards, Cluster development and export enhancement.
He added that Tariff Based System for automotive sector was introduced to make auto industry trade related investment measure compliant to encourage indigenization of parts and components, rollback through a transparent and predictable system. The CEO said that the Board has drafted electronic policy in consultation with German Experts and concerned stakeholders for the development of electronic sector in Pakistan. It has been presented to the working group and Secretary Industries and Production. The formal approval will be given after consultations with concerned ministries.
Mr Elahi said that a draft report on National Steel Policy has been submitted to the Ministry of Industries and Production for consideration and further necessary action. Work has been initiated to formulate the policy on Foundry industry in consultation with concerned stakeholders. The working group has been constituted, which has finalized a draft report.
The country was promoted as an emerging subcontracting destination and 9 JV and technical collaboration agreements were signed as a result of these efforts. He referred to preparation of draft report on ‘Export Marketing Plan’ for 5 years targeting the unexplored regions / countries of Africa, South Asia, Middle East, and Latin America in this regard. He said that EDB has initiated to develop a long term National Engineering Exports Development Strategy with formulation of a high level working and 22 sectoral Groups which would undertake work in their respective sub sectors. The draft plan would be consolidated based on recommendations of these and final report will be ready by February 15th 2010.
Mr Elahi said that in order to increase the sophistication level and realize true potential in export, a special fund of PKR 2.5 billion has been created for product development and marketing for light engineering sector under Trade Policy Initiatives.
The CEO further said that strategy for electric capital goods was being prepared in consultation with WAPDA by identifying demand for next 5 and 10 years respectively and collecting capacity of local industry. A working group is working on development of agriculture implements to identify future requirements and obtain working drawings for manufacturing and creating standards. He also listed the steps taken by the Board for capacity building and international linkages for developing technical and managerial expertise in engineering sector.
(Sourced from Daily Times)
