Missing the bus

Shahzad Saleem is the chairman of the Nishat Chunian Group and the Pakistan Textile Council, a not-for-profit organisation created by Pakistan’s top 31 textile companies as a research, advocacy & impact acceleration platform for the textile and apparel industry. It has recently set up a national compliance institute in Islamabad and is working on the Generalised Scheme of Preferences facility from the European Union. “Our economy will not turn around automatically; our country cannot make progress automatically,” Mr Saleem told this correspondent in a recent interview. “Only an unfettered private sector has the power and potential to turn around our messy economy. That’s the only way around the economic chaos we are witnessing in the country today.” But for that to happen, he says, the nation must take some decisions critical for its future, and the authorities devise and put in place long-term labour, education, tax, energy and other policies.