KARACHI - A trade delegation of around 50 companies, led by Sri Lankan Trade Minister, will visit Pakistan from January 23, 2022 to explore more avenues of cooperation and collaboration with Pakistan’s business community. Islamabad and Karachi will be delegation’s main destinations.
Most of Sri Lankan tourists, who have been regularly visiting India and Nepal, were not much aware of the historical Buddhist sites in Pakistan, said Sri Lankan Consul General (CG) in Karachi Jagath Abeywarna during his visit to Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said KCCI release on Thursday.
KCCI President Muhammad Idrees, Vice President Qazi Zahid Hussain, Chairman of KCCI’s Diplomatic Missions Liaison Sub-Committee Ziaul Arfeen, former president KCCI Majyd Aziz, former vice president Shams-ul-Islam Khan and KCCI Managing Committee members were present in the meeting.
Sri Lankan Consul General sought KCCI’s cooperation in arranging B2B meetings during the visit of Sri Lankan delegation due in last week of January 2022.
“It is going to be a main activity as we haven’t received such a big delegation to Pakistan since long,” he commented.
He also advised KCCI to arrange a similar delegation to Sri Lanka as exchange of trade delegations was the only way to strengthen trade and investment ties between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. There was a lot of potential of bilateral trade and investment.
Referring to President KCCI’s remarks, Sri Lankan CG assured that they would look into the possibility of inviting maximum number of Sri Lankan companies to participate in “My Karachi Exhibition” which was scheduled to be organized at Karachi Expo Center from 11 to Feb 13, 2022. KCCI President Muhammad Idrees assured that Karachi Chamber would warmly welcome and fully facilitate Sri Lankan delegation during their forthcoming visit to Karachi by organizing B2B meetings.
He pointed out that Pakistan and Sri Lanka had been enjoying very cordial relations for many years. “Pakistan is 2nd largest trading partner of Sri Lanka in South Asia and we hope to become the first largest,” he said.
He noted that during 2020, goods exported by Pakistan to Sri Lanka totalled 324.7 million dollars while goods imported by Pakistan from Sri Lanka were of $78.9 million. The real trade potential was much higher than what the current statistics revealed, which called for more efforts and further close coordination between the countries.
He urged businessmen and investors to capitalize on the opportunities in the agriculture, textile, tourism, real estate, energy and IT sectors which were attractive investment sectors in both countries.
Sri Lanka has good skills to cut, polish and shape gemstones into world class jewellery and the jewellers in Pakistan could avail this opportunity by entering joint ventures which would enable them to make world class jewelry.