F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Engineering Development Board (EDB) Raza Abbas Shah on Wednesday said that competitive efficiency improvement and export enhancement exercise were imperative to collect proposals from engineering industry to promote the present government’s vision of ‘Make in Pakistan’.
He chaired a meeting to take stock of existing national standards, testing and certification facilities for supporting export sectors of the country,said a press release issued here.
Welcoming the participants of the meeting, Raza Abbas said EDB was mandated to look after capacity building of the engineering sector of the country, and integrating it with the global supply chain and markets to make the sector the driving force for economic growth.
The representatives of Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), Pakistan National Accreditation Council (PNAC), National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (NEECA), Higher Education Commission (HEC), National Productivity Organization (NPO), National Institute of Electronics (NIE), and Ignite-National Technology Fund (NTF) also attended the meeting.
The CEO said that stakeholders of export potential sectors including sanitary fittings and ceramics, power equipment, house hold utensils and cutlery, auto industry, home appliances and casting forging etc. had identified that domestic engineering goods exporters lose orders just because of the reasons that local industry did not fulfill international requirements of product testing, certification and inspections.
The objective of the meeting was to evaluate the prevailing situation in the context of domestically available facilities at competitive prices to local engineering industry rather than having to get comparatively costly and time consuming facilities from oversees.
The General Manager (SDG), EDB highlighted that engineering sector in Pakistan had very low share in international trade.
“Further, we do not meet product conformity of certification standards even with regional countries,” he added.
Pakistan had signed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China and was also working on other FTAs including Turkey and Thailand in future he said, adding some industry of the country did not have product certification or did not have component certification facility.
He also apprised the meeting that Export Development Fund (EDF) and other government schemes could be utilized for establishment of product testing and certification facilities.
The representative of PSQCA informed the meeting that the technical committee of PSQCA had capability to develop all types of product certification and standardization, but there was need to identify target market for products’ export.
The representative of PCSIR informed that as far as the electric fan sector export was concerned, PCSIR had all kinds of testing facilities and fan sector was exporting its product to Middle East and other regions’ target markets, adding however, EMC facility was not available in Pakistan which was mandatory requirement for EU market.
The representative of NIE informed that they were capable of all types of tests and inspections for electronic products.
The DG PNAC informed that Pakistan was included in the list of countries having equivalent status for accreditation of testing and calibration laboratories and certification bodies for product certification all over the world.
The NEECA’s representative informed that universities had many projects with stakeholders and local industry for the betterment of product efficiency and performance.
He mentioned the example of civil engineering tests were being carried out commercially at the universities, which could also be done for other engineering areas.
The representative of Ignite informed about their various initiatives for supporting industrial productivity and capability enhancement leading towards Industry 4.0.
It was decided that EDB would collect specific information from export sectors regarding their requirements for inspections, testing and certifications which would be shared with participants for devising way forward to supporting the industry to enhance their exports capabilities according to international standards.
