President underlines need for collective efforts to address lingering social, economic issues

ISLAMABAD,  : President Dr Arif Alvi on Wednesday underscored the need of making collective efforts by all the stakeholders to address some of the chronic social and economic issues of the country, impacting the national economy.
The president called upon the private sector including the industrialists and traders to come forward and share the responsibility in this regard by uplifting the plight of downtrodden strata of society, besides lending a helping hand in resolving the serious issue of about 28 million out of school children.
The president was addressing the 14th Achievement Recognition ceremony of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) held at the Aiwan-e-Sadr.
He urged the industrialists and well to do segments of society to come forward and play their active role as the country desperately needed their support.
The vulnerable people in the society should be provided with education and health facilities so that they could also get equal opportunities as such models were being followed across the globe, he added.
Referring to number of out of school children, the president said that he considered it as ‘a matter of serious concern’ and considering the enormity of task, collective efforts were required.
He said these endeavours should be focused on serving the huge human resource potential in the country whose talents could be fully utilized locally by imparting them proper education and skillsets, instead merely exporting them abroad as manpower.
These out of school children should be educated and imparted skills for the future of the country, he added.
“As a nation, we should set and go after our priorities in the economic and social sectors and turn our country stronger. If we are able to address our past mistakes, the change will come round,” he observed.
The president also lauded the establishment of Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) and said that such like initiatives were needed to stabilize the economy by attracting and fast tracking the foreign investment and further spurring the ease of doing business in the country.
He mentioned that recent crackdown on illegal smuggling had yielded positive impacts on the local industry and stressed upon continuity of such like policies.
The president also referred to importance of pricing of water in the domestic and agriculture use so as to control its wastage.
He also emphasized for increasing the tax net and bringing the eligible individuals and businesses under tax net and asked for promoting the transparent individual payment system in the country.
The president advised the industrialists, traders and exporters to avail of the facility of filing their grievances with the Federal Tax Ombudsman Office that was tasked to decide the matters within a short period of sixty days.
The president citing the Islamic history, stressed upon the need of ‘forgiveness’ in the society and said that different political parties were asking for level playing field in the upcoming elections.
About situation in Gaza, the president termed the Israeli aggression as manifestation of “barbarity and cruelty” and said so far, in the ongoing conflict about 10,000 Palestinians lost their lives, majority among them were children and women.
In the world marred by vested interests, he said the world was looking for morality based decisions.
Earlier, President LCCI Kashif Anwar, in his address highlighted the significance of addressing certain issues like the inflation, lack of skilled manpower, weakening of local tender against dollar, broadening of tax net, cost of doing business to increase exports and increasing the local and foreign investment.
Terming the SIFC as the positive initiative, he said that the LCCI would welcome the opening of barter trade with different countries.
On the occasion, the president gave away shields among the top performing industrialists, traders and exporters to recognize their contributions towards the country’s economy.