The 8th All Pakistan Chambers Presidents Conference (APCPC) is due to begin today. The main purpose of this annual event is to develop a common platform for all chambers and trade associations to highlight the country’s economic issues and their possible solutions at national level.
One expects a host of key messages and resolutions coming out of the two-day moot. In this column’s opinion, these should include (but not limited to) a strong demand for transparency — not only for CPEC and LNG projects in particular but also a push towards an open government in general. One specific demand to that effect should be that the government becomes a signatory to global Open Government Partnership (OGP) that aims at improving government performance, encouraging civic participation and enhancing government responsiveness to people.
Aside from transparency, the other item that should feature in this year’s APCPC’s declaration points is a consolidated view on tax amnesty schemes. The APCPC should come out clearly as to what is its view on VTCS and what are the conditions without which no amnesty scheme would be proposed or accepted by the business community in the future. To that end a demand for black money law ala the Indian black money act - that has both carrot and stick features – would be fruitful.
There are many other items on the reform wish list. But the most important one that APCPC should consider this year is how to reform its own lot. How to ensure that chambers and associations are more effective, and that they put their money where their mouth is.
A host of problems plague the chambers and associations in Pakistan. First, the business elite have no interest in chamber politics leaving the smaller players scrambling for power. That is not a bad thing per se, for even a small businessman may have the acumen to lead a chamber to success. But continuous lack of interest by the big players – who tend to be more visionary than the smaller players - means that the chambers/associations suffer from a chronic vision deficit.
In the rare circumstance when chambers or associations do have a vision, it is in fact only the vision of a president than a widely shared long term organisational vision. This raises serious concerns over the organisational capacity of these trade bodies. How can trade organisations complain of policy inconsistency at government level when their own house isn’t in order?
Second, in most cases the elected officials join the office for a term of twelve months. By the time, they get a hang of things there is hardly any time left for them to be able to set things right. Insiders also maintain that most chamber/association presidents and other elected leaders end up being caught in petty issues, which should instead be resolved by a well functioning bureaucracy.
And this brings us to the third biggest area of reform that Pakistani chambers/associations need: fixing their own bureaucracy, which is both under paid and incompetent in most cases. Most chambers/associations have either a retired government servant or a retired army officer or other such old hands as their secretary general. Regardless of their good intentions, these secretary generals are those people whose most productive years are past them, and are often comfortable playing yes-sir to the chamber/association presidents/chairmen while enjoying their post or near retirement parking lots. A weak bureaucracy also means that the elected heads of trade organisations spend most of their time in reactionary and fire fighting state.
The fourth area of chambers/association reform is their research capacity and quality thereof. Aside from some small initiatives taken by Karachi and Lahore chambers in recent years, there is hardly any chamber/association that produces quality in-house or collaborated research products, whether for advocacy purposes or as a service to their members.
The APCPC should also take account of the services that trade organisations offer to their members. Internationally, trade organisations do not only offer quality research products to their members but also a host of networking events, high level conferences, discussions, debates, employment portals, surveys, arbitration and what not. In Pakistan, services offered by most trade organisations are mostly limited to letters of recommendation, document attestation etc for visa purposes. Trade organisations should keep in mind that few services means less revenues and therefore fewer funds to hire good quality human capital for their research and advocacy needs.
The principle objective of the trade organisations is to further the goals of businesses. In the face of these long pending reforms in their own house, there is little chance that they can really realize their reason for existence and advocate or collaborate with the government to further the goals of businesses.
