Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) has said that in today’s competitive world, modern infrastructure system plays a vital role in rapid development of an economy and urged the government to involve private sector for accelerating the pace of development of physical infrastructure in the country. It said the limited fiscal space is constraining government’s capacity to improve the state of infrastructure and participation of private sector can help greatly in overcoming such constraints.

Zahid Maqbool, President ICCI in a statement said that the state of physical infrastructure is one of the critical factors holding back rapid economic growth of the country which needs to be upgraded through public-private partnership. He said the absence of public sector initiatives in an array of sectors including mass transit, railway, oil and gas exploration, water supply and sanitation needs a clear conducive government policy to facilitate private sector investment.

He said due to scarcity of government’s resources, the electricity and power infrastructure has also come under major strain which almost crippled the industrial sector & badly affected our exports. He cautioned that infrastructure deficit may become a major bottleneck for sustained development of economic activities unless private sector participation in infrastructure development is significantly enhanced.

He said by increasing the role of private sector in infrastructure projects, government resources can be freed to provide funds in areas and sectors needed for the socio-economic uplift and stabilization of the less advantaged citizens. Thus the state can turn to its core business of providing good governance, enhancing knowledge and skills, and providing basic needs for its citizens, he added.

Zahid Maqbool said that since long government has been the major financier of infrastructure and development projects directly from budget allocations which hampered its institutional and regulatory capacity to facilitate private participation in infrastructure ventures.

He stressed for the need of providing appropriate incentives and support through a combination of policy and institutional reforms and financing modalities to attract the private sector in financing and managing of infrastructure projects so that Pakistan could overcome its infrastructure constraints which will enable the country to move towards speedy economic growth.