ISLAMABAD: United Arab Emirates Ambassador Hamad Obaid Alzaabi has said that UAE wanted to further enhance trade relations with Pakistan as both countries have great scope to promote trade in many areas. He said Pakistan and UAE should focus on developing a 10-year roadmap to benefit from potential areas of mutual cooperation.
He was addressing the business community at Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry during his visit. He said Pakistani business community should take an active part in annual investment meetings and Expo 2020 in UAE to explore possibilities for enhancing their business prospects.
The Envoy said that UAE would host first international level “Expo 2020” in which 100 countries would participate and stressed that private sector of Pakistan should participate in that Expo to explore business opportunities. He said hundreds of Pakistani companies were doing successful business in free economic zones of UAE and more should invest in these zones that offer an attractive environment for investment. He said the exchange of business delegations was important to explore new avenues of cooperation and assured that he would work with ICCI to promote connectivity between the private sectors of both countries.
In his welcome address, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Sheikh Amir Waheed said that Pakistan and UAE enjoyed cordial relations but a bilateral trade of over $ 8 billion was not reflective of the actual potential of both countries. He stressed that both countries should focus on promoting strong connectivity between private sectors and facilitate a frequent exchange of trade delegations that would help in further enhancing the current volume of bilateral trade.
He said that Pakistan and UAE should focus on developing strong linkages between their youth and women entrepreneurs by creating platforms like youth and women business councils that would help in promoting sustainable trade and economic relations between both countries. He said Pakistan offered tremendous investment opportunities to especially for UAE’s investors in various sectors of its economy including infrastructure development, power generation, water management, agro-industries and they should visit Pakistan to explore JVs and investment.
He also added that many areas including aluminium products, horticulture, farming, dairy farming, livestock, financial sector, prefabricated houses and affordable low-income houses also offered good prospects for JVs and urged that both countries should strengthen cooperation between SMEs to achieve more beneficial results.
ICCI Senior Vice President Muhammad Naveed and Vice President Nisar Ahmed Mirza emphasised for regular interaction between Chamber and UAE Embassy to explore areas for improving bilateral trade and economic relations. Mehfooz Elahi, Ejaz Abbasi, Khalid Malik, Shakeel Munir, Fatima Azeem, Bilal Adil and others also spoke at the occasion.
