The Planning Commission hosted a policy dialogue titled 'Unlocking Pakistan’s High-Value Export Potential: Threats and Opportunities for the Automotive Industry', bringing together private sector stakeholders, academics, senior government officials and international development partners to deliberate on measures to enhance Pakistan’s automotive exports and contribute towards the $63 billion export target under Uraan Pakistan.
The session was jointly chaired by Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Energy Sardar Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari and Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Industries and Production Haroon Akhtar Khan.
Addressing the session, Ahsan Iqbal emphasized that increasing exports was essential for Pakistan’s economic stability, self-reliance and sustainable development, stressing that the country could no longer afford to remain focused primarily on its domestic market.
“The only sustainable path to strengthening Pakistan’s economy is through exports,” the minister said, adding that Pakistan must transform its economic orientation from an inward-looking domestic market to a globally competitive, export-driven economy.
He said the target of increasing Pakistan’s exports to $100 billion was a matter of national importance and required a fundamental shift in the way the country approached industry, investment, infrastructure and economic policy.
Ahsan Iqbal said Pakistan already possessed industrial clusters and productive capacities that could be developed further to enhance the country’s competitiveness in international markets. However, he stressed the need to modernize these clusters, improve productivity, strengthen infrastructure, adopt new technologies and create an enabling policy environment to facilitate exports.
He said the automotive industry had a particularly important role to play in transforming Pakistan into a competitive export economy. The sector, he noted, had the potential to move beyond serving the domestic market and become a major contributor to Pakistan’s global exports.
The minister stressed that Pakistan could not achieve sustainable economic strength by relying on borrowing and short-term measures. “Pakistan needs a strong economy to secure a respectable place in the comity of nations, and the foundation of that strength must be exports,” he said.
Ahsan Iqbal urged the private sector to take the lead in driving Pakistan’s export agenda, saying that exporters, manufacturers, investors and industry leaders must adopt a growth-oriented mindset and make international markets a central part of their business strategies.
He called upon industry stakeholders to sit together and formulate five-year export plans, clearly identifying how much each sector could contribute to Pakistan’s exports and what support was required from the government to achieve those targets. "We have no other choice; we must increase exports ,” he said.
The stressed that Pakistan needed a comprehensive district-level export development plan covering all regions and sectors of the country, with particular attention to areas where existing industrial capacities could be transformed into globally competitive export clusters.
