LAHORE - Farooq Iftikhar Saturday was elected LCCI new president, Irfan Iqbal Sheikh senior vice president while Mian Abuzar Shad as vice president.  According to LCCI election schedule, September 22 was last date for filing of nominations for LCCI office-bearers for year 2012-13 and no other candidate turned up for filing nomination against Farooq Iftikhar, Irfan Iqbal Sheikh and Mian Abuzar Shad. Therefore, all the three made their way to victory stand. A formal announcement, however, would be made at the Annual General Meeting scheduled for September 29.

The newly elected LCCI President Farooq Iftikhar while spelling out his priorities called for tightening of belt to wear off the intensity of ongoing economic crisis. The LCCI President feared that if the belt was not tightened by both the government and the private sector, the answer would be nothing else but more poverty and joblessness.
He said that tight monetary policy was not the only solution to fast increasing inflation but it could be tackled easily by increasing production and cutting unnecessary expenditures. He said that the business community would have to spend its energies for increasing exports, particularly the exports of non-traditional items.
He said that high mark-up was crushing the whole industrial sector like anything and this needs to be taken care of by the concerned authorities. The Federal Board of Revenue should also focus on simplification of taxes as existing procedures were cumbersome in comparison with other economies of the world.
The LCCI President said that the main objective of the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry was the promotion of trade and industry and all available resources would be utilized for economic turnaround as the economic meltdown had now started taking its toll and everybody in suffering badly.
Farooq Iftikhar said that Research and Development was an area which if was given proper attention could do miracles. He said that the LCCI would, in collaboration with business community, work for the promotion of Research culture in Pakistan.