ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan emphasized the significance of strengthening the country's industrial base on Tuesday while introducing an incentive package to attract greater investment in its manufacturing sector.
Addressing a group of business leaders during a daylong visit to the eastern city of Lahore, the prime minister laid out his administration's plan to consolidate Pakistan's economy by focusing on export-oriented industries.
"The package that I have provided you today, I should have provided it the day I came into power," he said while presenting a critique of his administration. "No country can advance or progress by selling vegetables and wheat. Countries progress by virtue of their industrial base."
Khan said nations created wealth after acquiring technological sophistication in their industrial sectors while increasing their production potential and ability to innovate.
He maintained the country's economy was headed in the right direction before it adopted the nationalization policy in the 1970s.
The prime minister said Pakistan never fully recovered after that since the previous administrations were against wealth creation in the country.
Elaborating the vision of his own government, he said that it wanted to focus on export-oriented industries from the outset.
He also maintained that the government should not have given an open-ended amnesty to people and instead directed it to the country's industrial sector to ensure its growth.
"As long as we are not going to increase our exports, we will perpetually face the dollar crisis," he said while referring to Pakistan's dwindling foreign currency reserves and growing current account deficit.
Khan maintained that the two problems had always forced the country to go to the International Monetary Fund to seek financial bailout packages.
The prime minister also reiterated that overseas Pakistanis were an asset while pointing out that his government wanted to ensure greater ease of doing business for the information technology sector along with the small and medium enterprises in the country.
Earlier, Pakistan's minister for industries and production Khusro Bakhtiar spoke about the incentive package for the industrial sector.
The package includes a five-year tax holiday for overseas Pakistanis investing in the country.
Apart from that, the government will not ask any questions about income sources of people who are willing to invest in the country's industrial sector.
