EDB finalizes budget exercises, forwards proposals to FBR
By Khalid Amin

ISLAMABAD—Engineering Development Board (EDB) here on Wednesday completed the 2008-09 budget exercise by finalizing its recommendations and proposals for considerations in the budget. A meeting of conveners of twenty sectoral committees held under the Chairmanship of CEO, EDB reviewed and approved the proposals and recommendations received from stakeholders which would be passed on to Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for incorporation in the budget.
The exercise titled Competitiveness and Efficiency Improvement (Budget 2008-09) was launched to provide the industry with necessary launching pad to be more competitive through tariff rationalization. It was started in February with formation of 20 sectoral committees.
A separate committee was formed to review Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs). Prominent industrialists of the relevant sectors were nominated conveners and members of these committees. These received several proposals through various sources, which were examined and discussed in a series of meetings of stakeholders. Today’s meeting gave final shape to these.
The import of raw materials for most of the industrial goods has been recommended at lower duties in order to maintain the prices of finished goods at affordable level. While providing sufficient tariff incentives through cascading to the local industry and foreign investors, the emphasis remained on making the industry more competitive through facilitation rather than providing undue protection.
The meeting observed that certain industries ignore their production efficiencies, unattended wastage both material and energy which affect their cost of production, hence making them uncompetitive. It is important that the cost of duties and taxes need to be weighted against these inefficiencies. The committee called upon the industry to shift emphasis to high value added goods in order to reduce the import cost for industry through proposing lower tariff on such material.
The committee also examined existing duty structure, available under various SROs on the import of raw materials, sub-components, components, assemblies, sub-assemblies, plant, machinery and equipment not manufactured locally, in the wake of elimination of TRIMS. It also reviewed execution of SAFTA and other Preferential Free Trade Agreements (PTAS/FTAS) and status of local industry. The meeting identified loopholes in SROs to discourage their unfair use.
It noted discrepancies, anomalies and problems faced by the industry during the implementation of SROs. The proposals were sent to EDB by electrical capital goods, home appliances, heavy engineering goods, machine tools, lifting equipment, light engineering goods, pharmaceutical, food processing, packaging and printing machinery, renewable energy equipment, cutlery and surgical goods sector, wires and cable manufacturers, electronic industry, paper and paper board products, chemical, plastic and other based products and automobile sectors.
Earlier, CEO in his welcome remarks underlined the need of keeping the cost of inputs low in order to address the problem of increasing prices so that the interests of the consumers could be protected.