LAHORE - Fearing that the highest-ever rate of markup may put a reverse gear to all measures aimed at well being of economy, the business community urged the State Bank of Pakistan to bring mark-up to single digit in the upcoming monetary policy.They said that the highest priority of the SBP at this point in time should be the availability of cheaper money to the business doing people to strengthen the process of industrialization and to arrest the fast widening graph of unemployment. In a country where the economy is facing a recession, the interest rates are brought down to stimulate growth, whereas in Pakistan it is the other way round. In the last two years interest rates in Europe and the United States have been brought down close to zero to save the economies from collapse. This is the time that interest rates should be brought down to single digit to spur growth.They said that a cut of 50 to 100 basis points would not be doing any service to the dwindling economy. He said that it was very unfortunate that we have failed to learn any lesson from the tighter monetary policy stance adopted by the State bank of Pakistan in the yester years.The ongoing economic scenario shows that there is hardly any time left for economic managers of the country and they all should understand the gravity of the situation that there would be no business community buyer if the interest rates are kept higher, observed LCCI President Irfan Qaiser Sheikh. He said that it is now before all of us that high discount rate is no more sustainable. It has been causing a great harm to economy and would continue to do so unless and until a realist approach is adopted. He said that the State Bank of Pakistan should understand that its continued tighter stance is inflicting a very heavy loss on the nation as the economy has already paid a very high price because of high interest rate. He reminded the policy makers that the private sector was the only hope for salvaging this country from a total economic collapse therefore a significant cut in cost of doing is direly needed. He said that in the last few years, the private sector had suffered set-backs because of higher cost of doing business.