The Parliamentary Secretary for Commerce, Ms. Shandana Gulzar Khan spoke at the Public-Private Dialogue on Gender Focused Economic Reforms, held at Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), Islamabad on May 02, 2019. The event was also participated by the Parliamentary Secretary for National History and Literary Heritage, Ms. Ghazala Saifi and several private sector representatives of SMEDA and civil society.
The secretary said, only by a vibrant private sector and a conducive working environment, the business activity in the country can be enhanced. Pakistan’s yearly fall in the figure of exporters is almost 1% which also carries a proportionate effect on the women exporters. Pakistan’s exports reduced from 25 to 20 billion in the last 5 years due to coercive tariff policy in the past. However, the new tariff policy is hoped to be friendlier and promote exports growth.
She said that in domestic commerce, unfortunately the big industries have found their captive audiences but Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) face problem. We are inviting investment in Pakistan – mainly from Singapore – in MSMEs where Singapore intends to develop the special economic zones established in the provinces.
Overcoming the major road blocks; especially addressing elite capture is crucial for the future of Pakistan’s economic stability. The indiscriminate accountability is critical to uphold rule of law where everyone – regardless of socio-political or economic background – should be given equal opportunities for social and economic inclusion and mobility. There is dire need to address the poor-rich divide to ameliorate the economic inequality.
Women in Pakistan have a limited access to the power corridors due the limited women representation. Gender focused economic reforms and inclusive legislation requires knowledge and thoughtful consideration of the issues that concern the businesswomen and the aspiring entrepreneurs. Women cannot be treated as Children of a Lesser God.
The purpose of commerce ministry is to also ensure ease of doing business and improve women’s access to market and ensure they – even those who want to work from home – have ways to make their ends meet. The incumbent government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) has merged ministries of commerce, industries and production, and the Board of Investment (BoI) to fuse and integrate existing institutions at the federal level to boost efficacy of policy reforms. The government is establishing National Competitiveness Council (NCC), having relevant federal, provincial and private sector representations with a dedicated secretariat attached to the Prime Minister’s Office. The aim of integrating the ministries is to foster design of policies and implementation of programmes to ensure effective service delivery. Like the idea of National Competitiveness Council (NCC), the provinces should also develop inter-departmental coordination mechanism for solitary and effective policy implementation.
Ms. Ghazala Saifi opined that thinking out of the box is need of the time. We are ignoring some critical areas where women can earn a better livelihood; while at the same time contribute immensely in boosting the economic activity at aggregate level. In this regard, she mentioned the jewelry and sweets markets. The only problem that Pakistan lags behind in these two areas, whereas rest of the regional countries are excelling is because we are still stuck in outdated techniques, which work no more. Modern techniques of branding and packaging should be plugged in, for value addition; capturing more market abroad, she added. She further enunciated that Pakistani sweets and jewelry are very popular abroad, especially in the Middle East and Gulf countries, but the market share is insignificant. This means that we are marketing our products wrongly.
Ms. Amna Malik, President COPAIR and CEO StartUP Pakistan, was of the view that typical business ideas are not paying off anymore. We ought to bring the factor of innovation to pave way for innovative entrepreneurship. She gave the examples of cyber-security and information technology in this regard, having a great potential to grow in. She also opined that it is very hard for women to compete; especially in a patriarchal society. It gets worse when women lack basic training about entrepreneurship and financial literacy. There should be comprehensive training programs to train the aspiring business women.
Ms. Masooma Sibtain, former Vice President, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) shared the priority intervention areas identified in the women national business agenda (WNBA) – a policy proposal on gender focused economic reforms presented from the platform of FPCCI. She called for the robust feedback of private sector on the potential avenues for enhanced economic participation of women given the impending SME policy and Strategic Trade Policy Framework (STPF) and their importance to reduce the alarming gender gap and add to the Pakistan’s GDP by about 30%. She also gave the good news, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), in order to encourage SME financing to women entrepreneurs across the country, has expanded the scope of the scheme to all the districts of the country with immediate effect.
Private sector representatives, after a robust discussions, put forward some key points which include: issues are being repeated again and again, implying that these are not addressed in the first place; more focus is on problems and less on solutions; women should have special quota in Special Economic Zones (SEZs); establishment of women associations at town and city levels; formulation of comprehensive data-base on women entrepreneurship and all the other relevant information in this regard; ought to bring improvement in all indicators of doing business and lastly there is a dire need to consider interest-free loans for women, as interest-based loan has a religious sensitivity attached to it.