LAHORE    -   Federal Minister for Board of Invest­ment Chaudhry Salik Hussain said on Monday that no foreign investment could be attracted without facilitation from the local investors. 

He was talking to the business community here at the Lahore Cham­ber of Com-merce and Industry. LCCI President Kashif Anwar and Senior Vice President Chaudhry Zafar Mah­mood also spoke. The federal min­ister said that before giving priority and protocol to foreign investors, in­centives should be given to the local investors first, because if they were happy, only then someone from out­side would come to invest here. 

He said that situation in Pakistan was that the investors had to go to the public institutions again and again, for one reason or the other. The aim of the institutions should be helping the business community run their businesses and not harassing them. Such an environment should be cre­ated here that people could expand their businesses, he suggested. 

Chaudhry Salik said that Special Economic Zones (SEZs) were func­tioning in the same way as Export Processing Zones. The penalties that were being imposed on solar in some societies would be discussed as the whole world were currently invest­ing in renewable energy. He said that chambers should give their opinion on dollar amnesty so that a scheme could be executed to convince those who re-tained dollars. He said that no political party had an economic manifesto. “First we have to ask our­selves that whenever a party comes to power, do they have any economic policy,” he added. About the Afghan transit trade, he said that Afghanistan was a landlocked country and the only way was to supply goods there by land route. “We will have to continue the Afghan transit trade, but the taxes should be revisited. I will continue to raise my voice on issues like refunds, taxes, investment of the business com­munity,” he said. LCCI President Kashif Anwar said, the promotion of foreign investment as well as local investment was need of the hour. According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan, the ratio of total investment in the country was only 15 per cent of GDP, which was quite low. The share of private invest­ment in this was only 10 per cent of GDP, which had become inevitable to increase. He said, “If we talk about the data of Net Foreign Direct Investment, it was US$2.6 billion in 2019-20, which decreased to US$1.82 billion in 2020-21, while in 2021-22, its volume was limited to only US$1.87 billion, which was also low.

He said that local investment could not increase until the problems of lo­cal industries were solved. “For ex­ample, our industries have to import a lot of raw materials, essential com­ponents and various machinery which are not avail-able in the country, on which they have to pay 100 percent cash margin, regu-latory duty, cus­toms duty and additional customs duty, which should be elimi-nated. Apart from this, the issues of pending refunds and multiple audits should also be cleared and rate of withhold­ing tax for businesses be reduced.”

The LCCI president said that in or­der to promote local investment, the govern-ment had to solve some prob­lems related to taxation on a priority basis, which would also improve the ease of doing business. “Currently, taxpayers have to undergo multiple audits of income tax and sales tax. We appeal that the number of these audits should be reduced. Apart from this, taxpayers have to bear all the audits, penalties, surcharges, bank attachments, inquiries, statements, returns, withholding of registered persons, penalty for late filing of state-ments/income tax returns and many other problems.”