The federal minister for information and broadcasting, Fawad Chaudhary, took to Twitter to express his displeasure on the lack of projection by media houses of the government’s achievements so far.
The federal minister, who is famous for being outspoken, noted that the media was only focussing on the negatives in hopes of bandwagoning on the blame train. In his tweet, Fawad Chaudhary mentioned an increase in exports of various products such as textile, sugar, rice and how the media has turned a blind eye to all of this.
Talking about the country’s textile exports, the minister said that they had soared to approximately $20 billion, which only two years back was around $15 billion. Owing to the current government’s export-oriented policies, such as the removal of anti-export bias, have paved the way for the textile industry to enter a phase of sustainable growth.
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Under the incumbent government, textile exports have seen a stable increase mainly because of the incentives provided by the government to support the industry. The government introduced duty-free import on major raw materials such as nylon, viscose, acrylic, etc. to support the textile industry; this helped the textile industry increase its range of products and achieve the overarching goal of product diversification.
The minister also took note of the record high rice harvesting of around 9 million tons of rice, of which $4.75 Bn worth had been exported.
Pakistan has seen a lot of boom in its export industry because of the government’s export-oriented policies. The government has focused on moving its reliance on the export of traditional products to traditional markets to non-traditional products to non-traditional markets. However, it was cautious of not meddling with the export policies on traditional products, thus achieving geographical diversification with product diversification.
The government opened up new avenues for the export industry by joining various conventions such as the TIR and opening routes for regional connectivity.
This regional connectivity would further support the export industry by providing them access to newer markets. As sea fares are skyrocketing, transport via road is a relatively better option to reduce the costs incurred and access new markets.
Read More: TIR Opens Up Huge Trade Opportunities
The government is also looking towards Africa, which can be a great market for exporting products. Africa has approximately a billion-plus population and has never been targeted before by any successive government. Getting access to it and exporting non-traditional products to it would support our export industry and provide the country with the opportunity to invest in research and development, thus expanding the range of products even more.
On the other hand, the federal minister noted that now when the prices of all the basic commodities were decreasing, no one in the media is talking about it. He hinted towards the hypocrisy of the media industry that when the prices were soaring, nobody shied away from reporting the price hike, but now, when the prices have dropped, there is complete silence on the media’s front.
This silence had the minister wondering whether the public only has an appetite for bad news.