Home TRENDING DAGHA ARGUES THAT INDUSTRIAL POLICY SHOULD PRIORITISE IMPORT SUBSTITUTION.

DAGHA ARGUES THAT INDUSTRIAL POLICY SHOULD PRIORITISE IMPORT SUBSTITUTION.

DAGHA ARGUES THAT INDUSTRIAL POLICY SHOULD PRIORITISE IMPORT SUBSTITUTION.

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Mohammad Younus Dagha, the interim minister for finance, revenue, and planning and development in the Pakistani province of Sindh, has argued that the State Bank of Pakistan should periodically adjust the value of the Pakistani rupee in accordance with the market rate of exchange for the currency.

Caretaker Minister for Finance, Revenue, and Planning & Development Mohammad Younus Dagha

The provincial minister emphasised at a World Bank and PIDE-hosted seminar in Islamabad that the country lacks an ideal foreign exchange market for efficient pricing via competitive market rates.

He expounded on the fact that a handful of foreign exchange dealers control open market prices and that inquiries undertaken by SBP found that a handful of banks controlling interbank rates had been implicated in unfair practises.

Dagha said during the conference that generating growth through imports should be central to the country’s industrial policy. He went on to say that a strategy centred on educated young people, high productivity, and value addition in the agricultural, mining, and mineral industries was necessary for rapid economic expansion.

He argued that economic strategies that fail to account for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) will never lead to progress.

Dagha, speaking on the state of the investment climate, remarked that stable governments, together with long-term continuity in industrial and tariff policies, are attractive to investors.

The minister added that unilateral trade liberalisation would be fruitless until Pakistan had a strong industrial base and gained access to countries where its trade rivals have free trade agreements. He recalled that the trade imbalance issue first became problematic for the Pakistani economy at the time that policymakers there lowered the average customs tariff from 18 percent to 8 percent, between 2002 and 2009.

Many important people from many different fields attended the event. It was broken up into segments where speakers discussed a given topic and then fielded questions from the audience.

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