KARACHI: As part of the recently announced five-year Uraan Pakistan economic transformation program, Planning and Development Minister Ahsan Iqbal encouraged banks on Wednesday to set up a “export development window” that would provide soft loans mostly to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in order to quadruple exports.
The minister emphasized the pressing need to boost exports from $30 billion to $100 billion in order to propel economic growth to 6%.
In order to boost export growth, agricultural exports, industrial development, and vital sectors like IT, services, mining, workforce export, the blue economy, and innovation, he emphasized the vital role that the financial sector plays.
Addressing the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)-organized meeting of bank CEOs, he stated, “Pakistan has tried to take off three times in the past but always failed due to political instability.” “The war in 1965 derailed our first attempt in the 1960s; political instability caused the second attempt to fail in the 1990s; and the 2018 political changes disrupted the third attempt in 2016.”
In order to help SMEs, the minister suggested that banks set up special export windows, which may result in $40–60 billion in export revenue over the following five years. He called on banks to actively support export growth rather than just financing to the government.
“Our businesses generate billions of rupees from the domestic market, but they often prefer to stay in their comfort zones,” he remarked. This also holds true for banks, which are comfortable financing to the government. We have, however, asked banks to reroute their credit to small and medium businesses. Since local bank loans can greatly help our SMEs even at regular interest rates, this approach may result in a win-win scenario for all parties.
According to the federal minister, Pakistan has the capacity to make great strides over the next 22 years and establish itself as a powerful illustration of rapid development. In order to promote growth and innovation, he also advocated for the introduction of laptop leasing programs, which are comparable to car leasing, and the launch of workforce scholarship programs in partnership with the SBP.
“In a similar vein, we are developing a program in partnership with the SBP and other financial institutions to provide scholarships to students who are accepted into the top 25 universities in the world but are unable to pay for their education,” he stated.
According to him, the Prime Minister’s House has set up a National Economic Transformation Unit to keep an eye on each ministry’s performance in support of Uraan Pakistan. In order to monitor progress and guarantee ongoing assessment, he continued, a report will be prepared every three months.
