Special Investment Facilitation Council to help shore up FDI: PM
PM for increasing FDI to $5 bn through SIFC
Task of SIFC is to increase foreign direct investment,
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday said with the help of the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC), the immediate task was to increase the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the country up to $5 billion.
He said he had fervently advocated a unified approach to steer the country out of the economic challenges on a path to sustainable growth.
“Employing a whole-of-the-the-government approach, the coalition government has decided to set up a Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) with a mandate to frame economic policies that ensure policy predictability, continuity and effective implementation to revive the economy”, the prime minister said in a tweet.
He said by virtue of its composition, the SIFC will serve as a top decision-making forum to push through fundamental reforms in the structure of the economy.
To begin with, he said, the forum will focus on leveraging key sectors such as IT, agriculture, energy, minerals and mining, and defence production.
“Attracting investment from friendly countries remains one of the key goals of the SIFC,” he added.
Shehbaz said the need for a representative forum like the SIFC has long been felt, given the scale of the economic challenges caused by internal and external factors.
He said the textbook approach to deal with a unique set of problems is not workable anymore. Hence, all the more reason to leverage collective wisdom to kick-start the economy to make it self-reliant, export-driven, and robust, capable of withstanding external shocks and upheavals.
“Creative ideas offer the solution to our economic problems,” he added.
On the other hand, referring to his upcoming visit to France to attend the New Global Financing Pact Summit, the premier said the reform of international financial architecture has long been a key demand at different forums by public policy scholars, policy practitioners & world leaders especially from the Global South.
In a tweet on Wednesday morning, Shehbaz said the grave nature of challenges such as climate change, natural disasters, environment, rising levels of debt and energy transitions has rung alarm bells.
“The globalization of the problems has necessitated the need for creative approaches to rethink the global financial system to make it representative and equitable,” he tweeted.He further said that during his visit to France, he would present Pakistan’s position on the need for restructuring of international financial institutions to fight the contemporary challenges facing humanity.
