ISLAMABAD - Engineering Development Board (EDB) has initiated consultative process for the competitiveness and efficiency improvement exercise for budget 2010-11. According to the official statement issued here on Saturday, 15 Sectoral Committees have been constituted on engineering and allied sectors to finalise sectoral budget proposals. The committees are constituted of prominent experts, manufacturers, consumers and representations of concerned ministries and organisations. An experienced and renowned industrialist as its convenor heads each committee. The committees are assigned the task to redress the tariff and other related issues of the concerned local industry affecting their competitiveness, further expansion and entrance into the global market. Several invitations for budget proposals have also been sent to industrial stakeholders/concerns, associations, chambers, manufacturers of engineering & allied products and consumer of such products, to submit their proposals through the convenors of relevant Sectoral Committees. The information regarding constitution of committees, their Term of References (TORs), guiding principles, list of active SROs concerning to the industry is placed at EDB website. The convenors will formulate and send proposals in consultation with members of the Sectoral Committee and relevant stakeholders by beginning of next month for preparation of a composite and comprehensive proposal. These proposals will be consolidated/examined for discussions in the meeting to be held during the third quarter of April 2010. The final tariff proposals will be forwarded to the concerned quarters by the end of April 2010. The meeting of the steel sector was held here Saturday under its Convener Noman Wazir, leading steel manufacturers of NWFP. The representatives of the industry urged that the sector should be kept under special procedures after introduction of Vat in line with the policies of other industrial countries.