Interest rate may be cut to 12pc: The News

KARACHI: Board of Investment Chairman Saleem H Mandviwalla has said interest rate may be cut to 12 per cent from 15 per cent after the government reviews the benchmark interest rate in March this year.

Besides that, “the government is bringing an industrial package, including new laws for the gems and stone sector,” he said.

He was speaking to industrialists at a seminar on ‘Public-Private Partnership’, organised by the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and its Infrastructure Management Unit (IMU) on Saturday.

He said the BoI was doing its best to include more and more private sector people in the public sector in order to make progress through public-private partnership.

He said the government had also made agreements for purchasing hybrid seed from China to improve per acre yield of crops and produce more food. “Hybrid seed will increase our per acre yield up to three times,” he added.

BoI Sindh Chairman and businessman Zubair Motiwala said the public-private partnership mechanism had always been productive all over the world whether they were developed or underdeveloped countries. He said the BoI would take all measures to exploit all possible areas of development including fish farming, corporate farming and agriculture in general.

A businessman invited the attention of BoI officials to smuggling of stationary and lubricant items from the Chinese border, to which Zubair Motiwala replied that the government should do something to control smuggling. “There are a variety of goods being imported into Pakistan under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA), which never went to Afghanistan and damaged local industries.

For more on this article, please click on the following link: Interest rate may be cut to 12pc: The News