20000105

R & C chief Tariq

likely to be new

EPB chairman

RECORDER REPORT

KARACHI: Tariq Ikram, Managing Director of Reckitt and Colman, is likely to take over as the new Chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau, informed sources confided to Business Recorder.

Ikram is believed to be a marketing wizard and his appointment will be announced shortly after the terms and conditions of the job are settled. Tariq Ikram will succeed, Wajid Jawad, who is a leading exporter of readymade garments and was appointed by the Nawaz Sharif Government. He left the post with the political change in the country on October 12, 1999.

The business community specially the textile sector is said to have been in favour of reinstatement of Wajid Jawad to the post and they in fact expressed their desire at a meeting with the new Commerce Minister, Abdul Razak Dawood, held at the Export Promotion Bureau recently. However, the Government this time has decided to try a marketing expert to boost country's external trade.

Since its inception, the EPB has been controlled by a number of famous businessmen, bankers and bureaucrats. These included Ashraf Tabani, Hameed D. Habib, M.A. Allahwala, Abdul Aziz, Mian Habibullah, Khawaja Bilal and Wajid Jawad.

The new Chairman will have a tough job to take the country's exports out of a stagnant rgion of nine billion dollars. Exporters face a variety of problems mainly related to sales, tax, rebate, export re-finance and high rate of utility charges which result in adding to their production cost making Pakistani products uncompetitive in the export market.