LAHORE :Pakistan Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (PCSIR) Wednesday established its Help Desk at Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
The inauguration was jointly performed by the Chairman PSCIR Dr. Syed Hussain Abidi, LCCI President Mian Tariq Misbah and Senior Vice President Muhammad Nasir Hameed Khan. LCCI Executive Committee Member Haji Muhammad Asif Sehar was also present.
Chairman PCSIR said that the Help Desk would work as a hotline between business community and the PCSIR. It would play a certain instrumental role for early redressal of the problems faced by LCCI members. He hailed LCCI for taking a lead in serving the business community and supplementing efforts of the government for economic well being of the country.
He said PCSIR was increasing collaboration with the industry so that the technologies demanded by the industry could be rolled out. He said that PCSIR had put in place an online system through which the users could get access to results of testing reports online anywhere. This online system would also be provided at the PCSIR Help Desk at the LCCI.
The Chairman said that allocation for research and development had been increased considerably in recent times.
LCCI President Mian Tariq Misbah said that the business community attached a lot of importance to PCSIR as it had important role to play in utilization of indigenous resources for the development and promotion of industrial sector leading to import substitution and export enhancement.
He said that there was dearth of quality testing labs in Pakistan so the industry had to get costly certification from abroad.
He said that technology, commercialization, development of standards for quality control and accreditation through state-of-the-art testing labs were some vital areas which needed to match the requirements of modern era. “It is the need of the hour to provide required support to enhance competitiveness of local industries. When institutions like PCSIR will come forward to assist new entrepreneurs for product development as well as the established industrial units for process development etc., then Pakistan will certainly improve in the field of innovation,” he added.
The LCCI President said that Pakistan was ranked at 110th place in Global Competitiveness Index and at 107th place in Global Innovation Index in 2020. These low ranks call for making concerted efforts with a sound plan. He said that due to inefficient energy consumption ratio, low end production and producing primary commodities, Pakistan was lagging way behind its regional competitors. He said that there was still a lot of room for improvement and they would like to collaborate with PCSIR to produce the desired results.
The LCCI President said,”We need to utilize existing resources optimally through reorganizing our R&D infrastructure and moving towards knowledge economy. We have got all the knowledge & skills and we just need to integrate our expertise with some action plan applying the SMART technique,” he said.
Mian Tariq Misbah said that the LCCI was determined to play its supportive role and ready to respond to any initiative that is meant to enhance the economic and commercial activities in the country.