ISLAMABAD- Muhammad Shakeel Munir, President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI), has said that Africa is a huge market, which still remains untapped and urged that the government to focus on African countries to boost its trade and exports. He said this while exchanging views with the Deputy Heads of Missions of Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria during their visit to ICCI. Muhammad Shakeel Munir said that Pakistan has formulated the ‘Look Africa Policy’ which should be fully implemented to improve trade relations with African region. He said that Pakistan has good potential to export many products to Africa including rice, engineering goods, electrical appliances, textiles, apparel, pharmaceuticals, sports goods, surgical instruments, cutlery, furniture and many more. He said that Pakistan can import many products from African countries that offer competitive advantage for import. He also briefed the African diplomats about the opportunities of JVs and investment in various sectors of Pakistan’s economy for foreign investors and urged to play role to motivate the investors of their respective countries to explore Pakistan for business and investment opportunities. The Deputy Heads of Missions of Morocco, South Africa and Nigeria thanked Muhammad Shakeel Munir, President ICCI for sharing useful ideas to further enhance bilateral trade of Pakistan with their respective countries and assured that they would extend all possible cooperation to promote business linkages of private sectors of their respective countries with Pakistani counterparts to take the bilateral trade and economic relations to higher levels.

Muhammad Faheem Khan, Vice President ICCI, Zafar Bakhtawari, former President and Convener ICCI Diplomatic Committee, Muhammad Naveed Malik, Khalid Chaudhry and others also offered useful proposals to promote trade relations of Pakistan with African countries.