SBI chairperson believes Pakistan can never become a heavy industrial center in the region.
Chairperson Sindh Board of Investment (SBI) Naheed Memon has no qualms as to what Pakistan can realistically achieve in engineering and industrial sector.
Also, she has guts to put her views bare at open forums like she did in an IEEEP, Karachi center moot in Karachi where she categorically said Pakistan could never become a heavy industrial regional power. “No! It’s not possible,” she said.
She raised a question if Pakistan could develop to be a light engineering, smart and trading hub. Yes, she believed and suggesting “we should utilize our energies for achieving such a goal”.
Memon who presided over a pre-event gathering of the IEEEP Karachi where some senior engineers appeared critical of Pakistan’s inability to develop local engineering base which once existed in the country. One of them recalled Pakistan used to manufacture electronic components in the 1960s besides other engineering products. They criticized the policies of successive governments which pushed the country to outsource and thus the local set up suffered in the country and eventually came to an end. Naheed Memon said the lack of skilled human resource was the biggest hurdle and also there was a dearth of ‘ideas’ in Pakistan. She believed Pakistan’s entrepreneur sector was taken over by mediocrity saying both factors stop the country from marching towards development. She does not stop here, saying she hardly meets those who want to be rich; they want to earn the money only and also lack resolve to move forward.
She said it was a misconception that no one wanted to do anything in the country and lacked interest. What we require was to rise and get rid of mediocrity. She said whatever happened in the past was due to the policies based on ad-hocism which prevented the country from local manufacturing and also no attention was paid to promote local industry.
Naheed recalled she had participated in hundreds of the moots on China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which all of were of no worth and just a waste of her time. She found same mediocrity and absence of ideas there too.
She advised the IEEEP to pay attention to making their conferences and moots smart so that the participants take something worthwhile back home.
