Ministries differ on exports targets: ICCI

ISLAMABAD - The lack of coordination among various organs of the government is well obvious from the fact that the ministries of commerce and textile have set entire different targets for the exports for the ongoing fiscal year 2009-10.
Mian Shaukat Masud, President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI), stated this while talking to TheNation here on Tuesday.
He said there were lot of conflicts between the both ministries in settling export targets in trade and textile policies, which were separately announced in July and August respectively.
It may be mentioned here that the ministry of commerce, in the Strategic Trade Policy Framework 2009-12, has predicted that overall export will grow by US $1 billion in the financial year 2009-12 with a growth ratio of 6 per cent. Ministry of commerce has set $18.86 billion export target for the year 2009-10 which was $17.78 billion in 2008-09.
Contrary to this, the ministry of textile industry has forecast a US $25 billion export target for next five years, which means that the textile export would see a growth of US $5 billion per year during the next five years. Shaukat said if textile exports grew by $5 billion in 2009-10, how overall export of the country would increase by only $1 billion.