LAHORE: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry has welcomed the decision to form Trade Organisations Advisory Council which will consider proposals of trade bodies. “It is an endorsement of the stance of the LCCI that the Trade Organisations Ordinance 2007 is against the objective of chambers and trade bodies,” LCCI President Mian Muzaffar Ali said in a statement on Wednesday. He said the ordinance had failed to deliver so it should be repealed or implemented after due amendments. He said Clause 23 of Section 13(a) of the ordinance, according to which half of the executive committee members should retire every year, was tantamount to weakening the trade bodies and chambers. “It will be better and in the interest of the business community if one-third members of the executive committee retire every year as was previously in vogue.” He suggested the tenure of the executive committee of all chambers should be for three years, as the period of one year for half of the members was so short that they would be unable to play their role for economic turnaround. The LCCI president said although the government claimed it was trying to strengthen corporate culture and for that purpose the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan had been made the watchdog, still the definition of corporate members in the ordinance was extremely faulty. He said the ordinance, promulgated by the previous government, should look into socio-economic problems of the country and should be rationalised rather than sticking to orthodox views to keep the business community under its thumb and bar them from flourishing independently. Muzaffar Ali said Commerce Secretary Suleman Ghani, during his visit to the Lahore Chamber in February, had admitted the Trade Organisations Ordinance 2007 had many flaws and had no provisions for small businesses and SMEs and should be scrapped or reformed. “All over the world trade bodies have their own rules and regulations and do not need any watchdog but Pakistan and Bangladesh are the only countries where trade bodies are regulated by the government,” he pointed out.