950807

Development of

export culture

emphasised

ISLAMABAD: The Secretary Commerce, Aslam Qureshi Monday called for developing an export culture for boosting economic development in the country.

He was speaking as chief guest at the weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Pakistan Metropolitan at a local hotel. The Commerce Secretary said that it is imperative to improve quality of Pakistani products for developing export oriented culture to the high standard. He said that the buyers of Saudi Arabia, Middle East and Euorpe where Pakistani export goods could fetch good money were quality conscious and wanted quality products.

Upgradation of industry should also be done to achieve this goal. He regretted that "we are lacking in export culture. We will have to improve quality of our goods without which economic development cannot be achieved".

He said that the Government had taken measures for the liberalisation of economy and desired results were forthcoming.

Giving an outline of country's trade and commerce, Aslam Qureshi said that "our trade depended on two or three major crops. Our textile industry is based on cotton crop. Our cotton crop faced disease in last two three years and we imported cotton from Central Asian States to run our textile industry last year".

The second big crop is rice but "we lost in price as well as in export during the last few years. We started export of sugar from this year".

The Commerce Secretary said that Pakistan was now concentrating on the export of leather goods and about other 150 items. It is gratifying to note that an increase of 75 percent is registered in the export of small items, he added.

He said that regional trade groups such as European Market, Asean, Sarrc and ECO have emerged in the world which tried to protect their interests. "We are member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and bringing down our tariff".-APP