By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called on business community to help chart a path toward export-led growth, telling industrialists and entrepreneurs that any expansion not driven by exports would ultimately prove hollow.
“Whatever growth we have to achieve, it has to be export-led growth, period,” Sharif told business leaders gathered at a meeting on Tuesday, adding that other forms of growth carried “no meaning” for an economy still working to stabilize.
The gathering, also attended by Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar, marked the start of the fiscal year’s first quarter — a timing Sharif said was deliberate. He asked attendees for their assessment of export barriers and how the government might dismantle them.
“I need your opinions on how to increase our exports, as well as what challenges we will face and how to address them,” Sharif said.
The premier pointed to tax relief for exporters included in June’s federal budget as evidence of the government’s approach, and credited months of consultation with business leaders ahead of that budget for shaping the final package. Finance and commerce ministry officials, along with their secretaries, met with stakeholders before Sharif himself joined the discussions, he said.
Those consultations, Sharif said, helped drive structural changes that had been delayed for years. He cited Rs800 billion recovered over the past year through stepped-up enforcement — without new taxes — as a marker of progress, and said the government had pursued sales-tax cases that had languished in courts for a decade, particularly those tied to indirect taxes paid by consumers.
“Through your consultations in difficult times, the way we brought structural changes over the past two-and-a-half years … it’s teamwork. It’s a tremendous teamwork,” Sharif said.
The premier also linked the reforms to Pakistan’s standing with the International Monetary Fund, saying the enforcement drive was a factor in the Fund’s decision to extend an allowance to Islamabad for the first time. He said the IMF’s managing director had separately agreed to a tax waiver during talks with him, though he did not elaborate on the waiver’s scope or timing.
Sharif’s remarks build on a broader push by his economic team to reorient growth around exports rather than domestic consumption. Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said in July that the government was working to diversify both its export products and target markets in pursuit of 6% sustainable growth, warning that growth not anchored in exports risked becoming “another economic bubble that bursts within a few years.”
Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb struck a similar note last week, saying Pakistan had moved past stabilization and into a growth phase led by exports and the private sector, with sustainability now the central challenge.
Earlier this week, Sharif welcomed a new export insurance facility from the Export Development Fund and the Export-Import Bank of Pakistan, describing the Rs3 billion risk pool as a step toward widening access to export credit insurance for small and medium-sized enterprises. He called the initiative a welcome boost for SMEs and the broader economy.
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