LAHORE - Ambassador of Nepal Tapas Adhikari, Ambassador of Azerbaijan Khazar Farhadov and Ambassador of Turkmenistan Atadjan Movlamov visited the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Monday and had a deep discussion on the trade and economic ties between Pakistan and their respective countries.
LCCI President Mian Nauman Kabir presented the addresses of welcome while Senior Vice President Mian Rehman Aziz Chan and Vice President Haris Ateeq also spoke on the occasion. The Executive Committee members were also present in the meetings. Ambassador of Nepal Tapas Adhikari said Nepal sees Pakistan as a preferred partner and is keen to expand trade relations. He said that Nepal Chamber has inked a memorandum of understanding with Lahore Chamber implementation on which in true sense of words can help increase bilateral trade. While calling for exchange of trade delegations between the two countries, the ambassador said that he himself will bring a delegation of Nepali businessmen to Pakistan soon.
Ambassador of Azerbaijan Khazar Farhadov said the Lahore Chamber is playing a key role in maintaining good economic relations between the two countries. He said that Pakistan is a strong country and has supported Azerbaijan in testing times. “We want to further improve the trade relations with Pakistan”, the ambassador said and added that cultural cooperation should be promoted. Ambassador of Turkmenistan Atadjan Movlamov said his country gives a great importance to better relations with Pakistan and wants to speed up work on Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI) Pipeline Project. He said that a logistics center has been established for transit trade in Turkmenistan but one route cannot meet the requirements, so access to the ports of Karachi and Gwadar is very important.
Talking to the Ambassador of Nepal, LCCI President Mian Nauman Kabir said that Pakistan and Nepal are members of SAARC and enjoy friendly relations since 1960s. We keep on emphasizing for having well devised strategy for ensuring regional peace through maintaining trade and economic relations among SAARC countries. Nepal, being a land-locked country between China and India can understand the importance of regional trade better than others. He said that Nepal has import-oriented economy whose imports are far greater than exports. In year 2021, the value of its total imports was around 15.8 billion dollars against the total exports which were just 1.7 billion dollars.
Mian Nauman Kabir said that these are noticeable facts that Nepal has to depend a lot on India and China for importing basic materials. The shares of India and China were almost 61% and 15% respectively in total imports which amounted to dollar 12 billion in 2021. He said that as far as our trade ties between Pakistan and Nepal are concerned, we need to adopt innovative ways to know more about each other’s potential areas. Despite having long and cordial relations, the volume of total trade between two countries remained limited to 7.3 million dollars during 2021.