Islamabad, August 25, 2026: Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Sardar Tahir Mehmood has said the ICCI Founder Group is entering the 2026–28 elections with a clear record of performance, practical initiatives and tangible results, seeking the business community’s mandate on the basis of its achievements rather than promises.
In an interview here on Tuesday, Sardar Tahir Mehmood said elections for the ICCI Executive Committee for the 2026–28 term are scheduled for September 16, 2026, and expressed confidence that the business community would support leadership that had consistently worked to strengthen the Chamber as an effective voice and facilitation platform for the private sector.
He said the Founder Group believed that the real strength of a chamber of commerce lay not in slogans but in performance, continuity, credibility and delivery.
“We believe in serving the business community through practical initiatives, strong advocacy and measurable results,” he said, adding that during the current tenure, ICCI had intensified efforts to improve the ease of doing business, reduce regulatory bottlenecks and strengthen institutional linkages between the business community and government departments.
The ICCI president said the Chamber had consistently raised issues relating to taxation, energy costs, CDA regulations, property and commercial matters, infrastructure, parking, business facilitation and other challenges affecting investment and enterprise.
He highlighted ICCI’s growing role as a business facilitation and problem-solving platform through engagement with government institutions, regulatory bodies, diplomatic missions and international business organisations. He said these initiatives and dedicated engagements had created more direct channels for the business community to resolve operational issues and access government services.
Sardar Tahir Mehmood said ICCI had also expanded its international outreach and commercial diplomacy by organising business delegations, business opportunity conferences, B2B engagements and investment-focused activities with key international markets.
The objective, he said, was to connect Pakistani entrepreneurs with global markets, attract foreign investment and create new avenues for exports, partnerships and joint ventures.
He stressed that the prosperity of the business community and Pakistan’s economy were inseparable, arguing that business growth directly contributed to higher investment, employment generation, exports and government revenues.
“When businesses grow, investment increases, employment is created, exports rise and government revenues improve. Therefore, supporting the private sector is not a concession—it is an investment in Pakistan’s economic future,” he observed.
Sardar Tahir Mehmood said the Founder Group would continue advocating policy consistency, lower costs of doing business, competitive energy prices, simplified taxation, efficient regulation, improved infrastructure and greater access to finance to enable businesses to expand with confidence.
He said the upcoming election would provide the business community an opportunity to assess the performance of the existing leadership and decide on the future direction of the Chamber.
The ICCI president expressed confidence that the Founder Group’s record of practical initiatives, sustained advocacy and engagement with both domestic and international stakeholders would enable it to secure the business community’s continued support for the 2026–28 term.
