IANS | 03 Feb, 2010
A parliamentary panel Tuesday urged the Pakistani government to revive the country's film industry to boost tourism.

The government should also exempt cinemas and theatres from entertainment and other taxes, the Senate's standing committee on tourism suggested at its meeting in Islamabad chaired by Nilofar Bakhtiar.

Bakhtiar was the tourism minister in then prime minister Shaukat Aziz's government but was forced to resign May 2007 after a fatwa was issued against her for being photographed hugging her instructor after a parachute jump in France.

Aziz rejected the resignation but Bakhtiar insisted on it being accepted.

The committee also directed the ministry of culture to make arrangements to observe a film industry revival week in the country, Online news agency reported.

Voicing concern over the construction of shopping plazas on the land allocated for cinemas, the committee urged the provincial governments to stop such constructions.

At the peak of Pakistani cinema industry in the mid 1970s, the country's financial capital Karachi alone had more than 100 cinema halls and more than 200 films were produced and released each year. Now, fewer than 10 of these houses remain. The same happened a little later in Lahore as well.

This resulted in the film industry losing a lot of revenue, making it unattractive for investment. Today, just about 30 films are produced in the country annually.