By: Junaid Qayyum
Islamabad: Muhammad Ahmed Waheed has taken over the charge as President, Tahir Abbasi Senior Vice President and Sai fur Rahman Khan as Vice President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry for the year 2019-20 in a handing over/taking over ceremony held at Chamber House.
Speaking at the occasion, Muhammad Ahmed Waheed vowed that resolving the key issues of business community would be his top priority. He said that business community was the backbone of the economy and government should take measures to provide an enabling environment for businesses that would help in steering the economy out of current challenges. He urged that government should involve the business community in consultation process to overcome the hurdles that were impeding the growth of business activities and find out their consensus solutions.
Muhammad Ahmed Waheed said that promoting ease of doing business and investment was the key requirement to transform Pakistan into a strong economy and desired that government should formulate policies aimed at facilitation of entrepreneurs and investors. He said his doors were open for the business community and also called upon the ICCI members to keep sending proposals for redress of problems and bringing further improvement in the working of Chamber for their facilitation.
Tahir Abbasi, Senior Vice President and Saif ur Rahman Khan Vice President ICCI said that SME sector was the key pillar of Pakistan’s economy in terms of contribution to GDP, employment generation and export promotion, therefore, government should take measures to further strengthen the SMEs. They said government should consider reducing key interest rate and focus on providing easy access to finance to SME sector along with easing the conditions of collaterals in order to help SMEs and startups to flourish and play more effective role in the economic development of the country.