Incidents
pertaining to visa rejections and delayed processing have escalated sharply
during the past few months, which create immense hardships for those genuine
businessmen who are willing to enhance their exports to many western countries.Business community experts, commenting over the situation, express disappointment over visa policies being pursued by various embassies in Pakistan who have failed to satisfy the business community and some of the genuine businessmen, who are frequent travelers, remain deprived from prompt and efficient visa facility.
The emerging situations due to unnecessary delays and rejection not only proves to be disappointing for the business community only but also for the entire country as the exporters are unable to fetch the much needed foreign exchange for the country and the decision makers find it hard to pull the economy out of woods.
Business community representatives from the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) including Siraj Kassam Teli, Chairman Businessmen Group and Former President KCCI; Tahir Khaliq, Zubair Motiwala and Haroon Farooki, Vice Chairmen BMG; Anjum Nisar and A. Q. Khalil, Former Presidents KCCI and many others have been yelling from quite some time now that they don’t want to depend on aid as they prefer having trade but the government has so far not taken any major step to convince the governments of various western countries to facilities the local business community on high priority. How can anyone expect from the business community to enhance their exports under the current circumstances when they face visa delays and rejections by many western countries including USA, UK, and Europe etc.
It is pertinent to mention here that Federal Minister for Commerce, Makhdoom Amin Fahim, while unveiling the Trade Policy 2009-12, indicated an export target of US$18.86 billion, which many business representatives believe will be impossible to achieve.
The aftermaths of visa delays and rejections to the business community can easily be gauged from the fact that the, so far, developments in terms of exports are also not so encouraging as the country's exports have posted a major decline of 13.78 percent during first two months July-Aug period of ongoing fiscal year 2009-10 as compared with same period last fiscal.
According to the provisional trade figures released by the Federal Bureau of Statistics Pakistan's exports managed to reach $2.969 billion in Jul-Aug period of current fiscal year as compared with the exports of $3.443 billion in same period of last fiscal year 2008-09, projecting a decline of 13.76 percent.
Trade deficit during first two months Jul-Aug period of ongoing fiscal year totaled at $2.194 billion as against the deficit of $3.564 billion in the same period of last fiscal year 2008-09, showing a decline in trade deficit by 38.45 percent.
A negative 5.36 growth in exports has been witnessed with total exports at $1.480 billion in the month of August 2009 as against the exports of $1.564 billion in August 2008.
Some 44.92 percent decline has been registered in trade deficit during August 2009 with total deficit at $1.043 billion as against the deficit of $1.895 billion in August 2008. A decline of 0.58 percent has been witnessed in country's exports during August 2009 when compared with exports of $1.488 billion in July 2009. Imports declined by 4.36 percent in August 2009 with imports totaled at $2.524 billion as against the imports of $2.639 billion in July 2009. Trade deficit also declined in August 2009 by 9.25 percent with total deficit at $1.043 billion as compared with $1.150 billion in July 2009.
According to the officials at Ministry of Commerce, demand in the exports markets of the developed countries is witnessing declining trend and this is also one of the major reason behind the decline in the Pakistani exports. Besides issues of domestic side pertaining to power and gas shortages, visa delays and rejections along with negative travel advisories being issued by many countries around the globe terribly hamper the efforts of trade managers and business community to boost exports as the export-oriented industries have been hit hard by the difficulty.
The government must pay attention to this issue while the embassies must express solidarity with Pakistan during the ongoing difficult times by extending support and priority to those businessmen, who are intending to visit aboard with a vision to enhance the exports.
The
embassies representing many western countries must provide an "efficient" visa
operation, with excellent customer service to Pakistani citizens, particularly
the business community, and the aim should be to provide a service that treats
applicants fairly. Pakistan has always been at the frontline in the war against terrorism and the entire nation has made many sacrifices from time to time to support this cause, which was not only in favor of Pakistan but the entire international community as terrorism poses severe threat to everyone. The international community must realize Pakistan’s role and efforts against the menace of terrorism and they do more for Pakistan by at least providing an efficient visa service so that our business community, which is capable enough to earn the valuable foreign exchange, could represent Pakistan in a much better way. Nowadays, the B2B (Business-to-Business) interaction has become inevitable for Pakistani exporters but they are unable to do so thanks to the poor visa services being provided by the embassies here.
The embassies have their own reservations about granting visas to Pakistanis because of the security threats but experts suggest that instead of delaying and rejecting visas to the business community, the embassies must devise a strategy entrusting the authority to give recommendation letters to the local trade bodies like Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. These recommendation letters issued to genuine businessmen, who should be granted visas on high priority.
The good news for Pakistanis intending to visit UK is that the UK government recently announced the decision to move the visa application office for Pakistani citizens from the United Arab Emirates back to Pakistan in order to address delays which have caused high tension across the country.
The announcement was made by Alan Johnson, the Home Affairs Secretary, following crisis talks with his Pakistani counterparts.
Johnson had been meeting with the Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik to discuss a range of issues including delays in visa issuance, terrorism, extremism and illegal immigration. He also announced that the UK had decided to reduce the time period for issuing visas from 60 days to between 15 and 20 days which has been warmly welcomed by the business community as it will help in easing the miseries being faced by them during visa processing.
Both Pakistani and British officials admit the visa issue has lately become quite alarming. More so because it not only involves hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis, a bulk of them are students whose academic career was at stake because of the hitherto unexplained delay in the issuance of visa.
Many others who have either been denied visa or were still waiting for it after several weeks are also important and regular travelers like businessmen, university professors and those invited to attend international conferences.
In Pakistan, the anger among the visa seekers for the various countries is growing. But at the same time quite a few frequent travelers have also offered valuable suggestions to improve the system.
Among these suggestions, they say, is a need to create some kind of helpline where, instead of a machine, a human voice takes the complaints. Secondly, like most EU countries, passport should not be retained by the high commission and should only ask for if the visa has been approved.