Daily Times

Minister for Planning Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday said that the Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) had the potential of $40-60 billion export in the next 3 to 5 years.

Speaking at the ‘Export-led Economy – Race to $100 billion’ ceremony, along with Minister for Commerce Jam Kamal Khan, he said that the government would facilitates SMEs sector to achieve this potential target. The minister reaffirmed the government commitment to significantly increasing exports, setting an ambitious target of $100 billion within eight years. He stressed that achieving this target within eight years, would be beneficial, but in case of missing, it would pose significant challenges.

Ahsan emphasized the need to enhance production and leverage key sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, and information technology, mining, manpower and creative industries to drive growth. In order to increase the exports, the government would collaborate with the relevant department/ministries to develop a dashboard, outlining a clear road-map for growth in these sectors, he added.

Similarly, he said that only 70 out of 500 companies on the Karachi Stock Exchange generated exports of around $10,000, and big KSE companies earned billions in profit without contributing to dollar exports. To address this, he suggested for working on policies and incentives to encourage the private sector to contribute to the country’s exports.

Jam Kamal Khan attributed Pakistan’s export decline to various factors, including high interest rates, production costs, COVID-19, and the Ukraine conflict. However, he highlighted that the government had formulated a strategy to increase the country exports to $60 billion.

He said that inflation and interest rates had come down consistently while the global investors were interested in investing in Pakistan. “Investors confidence has restored after International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme”, he remarked. “In the past, the focus was on textiles, now the focus is on pharmaceutical exports”, he added.

He said : “Pakistan’s economic future depends on significant increase in exports.” He said that Pakistan’s textile and manufacturing sector exports had increased by 13.8% and 15.9% while agriculture exports increased by 54.8% to reach $7.95 billion in 2024. “Export Development Fund is being used effectively to increase export capacity,” he added. He highlighted that the role of the private sector in achieving export target was extremely important and Pakistan was capable of more than $100 billion, but definitely there was need of a robust strategy.