Governance issue has gained importance over the last ten years and become a key component of policies for economic development. Good governance acts as a positive force to influence economic growth where, a growing amount of available evidence suggests that lack of quality governance hinders growth and investment, and aggravates poverty and inequality. In fact, governance problems foil every effort to improve infrastructure, attract investment, and raise educational standards (Harford, 2006). Governance matters significantly for a country’s performance effectiveness.
Better governance will lead a country to achieve greater competitiveness. Competitiveness indicates the ability of a nation to maintain high rates of economic growth and productivity with sustained employment. More competitive economies tend to be able to achieve higher levels of income for their citizens. Governance and competitiveness may be related, but they are distinct notions. In fact, competitiveness incorporates some governance.
Sialkot District is one of the districts of the Punjab provinces of Pakistan located in the northeast of the province and is the 13th largest city by population. Sialkot is a wealthy city relative to the rest of Pakistan and South Asia with a per capita income in 2014 estimated at $2800. The city has been noted for its entrepreneurial spirit, and productive business climate which has made Sialkot an example of a small Pakistani city that has emerged as a “world-class manufacturing hub”. The relatively small city exported approximately $2 billion worth of goods in 2015, or about 10% of Pakistan’s total exports.
Sialkot has been noted as a “world-class manufacturing hub” with strong export industries in the fields of leather, sporting goods, and surgical instruments industry. The Sialkot Dry Port offers local producers quick access to Pakistani Customs, as well as to logistics and transportation and manages its position as one of Pakistan’s most prosperous cities. Its sporting goods firms have been particularly successful, and have produced items for global brands such as Nike, Adidas, Reebok, and Puma. And produce footballs for 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Sialkot’s business community has joined with the local government to maintain the city’s infrastructure, as the local government has limited capacity to fund such maintenance. The business community was instrumental in the establishment of Sialkot’s Dry Port in 1985 and largely funded the Sialkot International Airport opened in 2011 as Pakistan’s first privately owned public airport, which now offers direct flights from Sialkot to Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates but the city has more capacity to deliver and wishes 10X growth by shifting from factor & efficiency-driven economy to Innovation-driven economy. This Summit is a small effort towards the dream of 10X growth for Sialkot city by identifying the strength and weak areas in order to deliver the required growth.
There has been a concern with regard to governance problems in Pakistan. Misgovernance, lack of transparency, deterioration of law and order, corruption, abuse of government power, political instability and lack of access to public redress for human rights violations are the paramount features of the governance environment in Pakistan. So the challenge facing Pakistan is the weak and deteriorating state of governance. Weak governance poses a major challenge not only to further gains in development but also to sustaining economic growth achieved so far where, in the world of globalization every nation fights to take their share from the basket global market which Is only possible through competitiveness achieved from better governance so, there is no doubt in the fact that, economic integration is an indispensable trend in all countries. However, besides the advantages that economic integration brings, there are also disadvantages, such as competition between businesses among states in export activities. Pakistan is a developing country with many advantages, especially, in the sports goods and surgical exporting industry. However, with competitive pressure as well as strategic constraints, Pakistani product exporters still face many difficulties and various factors influence competitiveness including,
- Vision and strategy of Government leadership and Governance Mechanism.
- Human resources management capability
- Organization capability
- Customer-responsive marketing capability
- Relationship management capability
- Technical capability
- Competitors reaction capability
- Business environment adoption capability
- Financial capability
- Products and services innovation capability
- Branding management.
- Supportive tax Structure etc.
Keeping in view Sialkot city, this session is conducted to counter all the factors that influence competitiveness ranging from Governance to taxation with an objective to target issues for the betterment of Sialkot’s exports in order to make it a model city.