In this age of cutthroat competition, product competitiveness is the right recipe to make a strong presence in global market and new trade policy should focus on improving competitiveness of products to enhance country’s exports.

This was said by Mian Shaukat Masud, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI) in a statement. He said improving quality and adding more value at economical cost will contribute effectively in making our products more competitive in international markets.

He said the country has mostly focused on comparative advantage in trade policy, which has not worked successfully to increase exports and now was the time that trade policy should shift focus on increasing competitiveness of products.

He said human resource development has traditionally been on a low priority on the agenda of policy makers and urged the government to pay more attention to human resource development by encouraging development of management and trade skills for increasing industrial productivity.

Mian Shaukat said there was a need of diversifying products to improve exports as exports cannot be boosted significantly by focusing on few products like textiles, rice, surgical instruments & leather goods etc.

He said diversifying markets for Pakistani products was also an urgent need to accelerate the export growth of our products especially in view of the financial crunch in the traditional markets of US and Europe. He stressed for the need of developing new products and identifying new markets for increasing market share of Pakistani products in new markets.

Suggesting some other measures to improve dwindling exports, he said trade policy should envisage reducing interest rate, ensuring credit availability and providing non-stop power supply to industrial sector, improving law & order situation and rationalizing tariff with particular focus to provide the exporting industry an environment which supports manufacturing rather than trading.

ICCI President said reducing the cost of doing business, enhancing market access, diversifying exports and encouraging foreign investment in export-oriented sectors were some of the essential requirements which the new trade policy should consider to promote significantly the country’s exports.