President Alvi for enhancing bilateral trade volume with France
ISLAMABAD, Oct 21 (SABAH): President Dr. Arif Alvi has emphasized the need for enhancing bilateral trade with France, adding that the bilateral trade volume of US$ 1.8 billion (2021) was well below the potential of trade between the two countries. He called for holding regular meetings of all bilateral mechanisms and urged the need to explore more opportunities for commercial collaboration, especially in the fields of IT, start-ups, agriculture and livestock.
President Dr. Arif Alvi expressed these views while talking to Pakistan’s Ambassador-designate to France, Mr Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, who called on him, at Aiwan-e-Sadr on Friday.
Talking to the Ambassador, the President appreciated that in the aftermath of devastating floods in Pakistan, French President Emmanuel Macron had announced relief support for flood-affected people.
The President asked the Ambassador-designate to work with the French side to hold the inaugural session of the Joint Economic Commission at the earliest, as it would be useful to boost the bilateral economic relationship. He urged the need to work on arranging a visit by MEDEF (French business association) to Pakistan in the coming months, which would help strengthen trade and investment relations between the two countries and bring more French companies and capital to Pakistan.
President Dr. Arif Alvi said that France had been an important partner of Pakistan in Europe as both the countries share multifaceted relations, cooperate in diverse areas including political, trade and economic, defence, education, and culture, and maintain close liaison at the international fora.
The President underlined the need to learn from the French experience in fashion design, high-end fashion products, agriculture and IT fields. He said that there was a great scope for accelerating the existing cooperation between the two countries in the fields of pharmaceuticals, electronic machinery parts, dairy products, organic chemicals, paper and paper board and articles of iron and steel etc.
The President also highlighted that higher education was an important area of bilateral cooperation and the Ambassador-designate should make efforts to include technical education and enhance French scholarships for Pakistani students to study in French universities. He said for the last eight years, the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) had an ongoing scholarship program to enable Pakistani students to pursue higher studies in France.
President Dr. Arif Alvi asked the Ambassador-designate to sensitize the leadership of France on the urgency to resolve the Kashmir dispute as per various resolutions of the UN Security Council and also on the increasing trend of marginalizing the minorities in India and Islamophobia, which had put the lives and livelihoods of the minorities, especially the Muslims, under great stress.
Meanwhile President Dr. Arif Alvi has stressed the need to accelerate efforts to further improve the existing bilateral relations between Pakistan and Japan, particularly focusing on economic, business ties and human resource development initiatives.
The President said these remarks while talking to Pakistan’s Ambassador-designate to Japan, Raza Bashir Tarar, who called on him, at Aiwan-e-Sadr on Friday.
The President appreciated Japan’s continuous support to Pakistan on the FATF platform and ask the envoy to convey his gratitude to the Government of Japan for its decision to suspend debt repayments due from Pakistan under the Debt Service Suspension Initiative.
President Dr. Arif Alvi said that bilateral trade between the two countries stood at around US$ 2.56 billion, which needed to be improved with a greater focus on exports of Pakistani goods and products to Japan.
While appreciating the development cooperation of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) with Pakistan, he directed the Ambassador-designate to make efforts to take the bilateral relationship to a new and higher level of cooperation. He said that the avenues should be explored for creating cooperation between Japanese educational institutions and industry for the provision of services of Pakistani IT human resources online to Japan and seeking Japanese assistance for online training to our human resources in the fields of IT, digital technologies, artificial intelligence and other skills, which are needed by the industrial sector of Japan.
The President also highlighted that Japan was very important for Pakistan as it had made valuable contributions in supporting development efforts over the years and had become the second largest partner of Pakistan by extending accumulated support of around US$13 billion for the social and economic uplift of Pakistan throughout the year. The President also stressed the need to work on reducing the Japanese tariff to bring Pakistani products at par with its competitors enjoying duty-free access to Japanese markets, especially in the textile sector.
The President asked the Ambassador-designate to sensitize the leadership of their host country on the urgency to resolve the Kashmir dispute as per various Resolutions of the UN Security Council and also on the increasing trend of marginalizing the minorities in India and Islamophobia, which had put the lives and livelihoods of the minorities, especially the Muslims under great stress.