Wednesday, August 06, 2008
By our correspondent
ISLAMABAD: South Africa and surrounding countries are interested in importing Pakistani tractors and their parts as the Pakistani Trade Office there is receiving several queries in this regard on a daily basis.
This was revealed in a meeting of the sub-committee on fiscal issuesñindigenisation formed under the Auto Industry Development Programme (AIDP) by the Engineering Development Board (EDB) which met here on Tuesday.
A representative of a major motorcycle manufacturing company in the country informed that they were about to make a breakthrough in the African market with the signing of an agreement regarding the exports of motorcycles. However, the committee felt that the progress on the export front was very slow and the industry should take remedial measures to increase it in order to offset the trade deficit, said a news statement issued here. It requested its sister committee on exports to thoroughly analyse the situation and recommend measures.
The auto industry expressed concern over the new tax measures introduced in the current budget and described them as detrimental to their growth. The industry is preparing a working paper on the adverse affects of the current budget, which will be submitted to the EDB shortly.
The industry will involve representatives of the Ministry of Industries and Production in its preparation. It was felt that the EDB needed to play an active role in reducing the communication gap between the industry and the government for effective policy implementation.
The committee also expressed its dissatisfaction on the speed of indigenisation in the industry and advised the EDB to collect data in order to judge whether or not the Tariff Based System (TBS) has given impetus to indigenisation programme. It also underlined the need of planning a substitute system which could replace TBS after 2012.
http://thenews.jang.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=128344