LAHORE - The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, while extending warm greetings to Dr Mahathir Mohamad for assuming the charge as Malaysia's seventh prime minister, termed it a good news for Pakistani economy as well.

"Credit of Malaysia's economic development goes to Dr Mahathir Mohamad who developed unparalleled economic policies and turned Malaysia into an economic power. New term of Dr Mahathir Mohamad has paved way for another economic revolution and Pakistan needs to avail this valuable and enhance its exports to Malaysia", said the LCCI President Malik Tahir Javaid, Senior Vice President Khawaja Khawar Rashid and Vice President Zeshan Khalil in a statement. The LCCI office-bearers said new era of economic development in Malaysia would create opportunities for Pakistani export-oriented industry that must be availed to the maximum as share of Pakistan in Malaysian imports of over $ 163.4 billion is meager that can be enhanced through little efforts and Pakistani embassy in Malaysia can play an instrumental role in this regard.

The LCCI office-bearers said that China, Singapore, Japan, USA, Thailand, South Korea and Indonesia are the major trade partners of Malaysia. It is a bit discouraging that Pakistan is not in this list despite good relations with Malaysia and having best-of-the-best products in the world. They suggested establishment of display center for Pakistani products in Pakistani embassies abroad to grab the attention of foreign buyers.

They said that the balance of trade has always been in favour of Malaysia and this situation is prevailing. Over the last five years this gap is constantly closing but still the total imports from Malaysia are six times of our exports to Malaysia.

The LCCI office-bearers said that Malaysia and Pakistan have already signed a Free Trade Agreement which came into effect in January 2008. It has to be taken seriously that we have failed to take some advantage of this FTA. It provided us good platform to be utilized for a win-win situation but Pakistan achieved far lesser than its potential.

They said that the business community is trying its level best to make good use of FTA but there has to be some support provided by the Ministry of Commerce and especially commercial section of our High Commission in Malaysia.