Hyde
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Pakistan, Sri Lanka to boost bilateral trade to $1 billion
ISLAMABAD (December 05, 2010) : Minister of State/ Chairman Board of Investment (BoI), Saleem H. Mandviwalla on Saturday termed the visit of President Asif Ali Zardari to Sri Lanka very successful and said that both the countries would boost bilateral trade from existing 300 million dollars to one billion dollars in near future.
According to a statement of the BoI issued here, Saleem H. Mandviwalla visited Sri Lanka with the President to finalise the possibility of enhanced commercial and economic co-operation and the potential of two-way investments between Pakistan and Sri Lanka. On return from his successful visit to Sri Lanka, the BoI Chairman said that Sri Lanka was keen to learn the agricultural techniques from Pakistan to increase the capacity of its agricultural land.
He said that a ceremony of signing the memorandum of understanding (MoU) in agriculture was also held in which BoI Chairman and Sri Lankan counterpart primarily assured each other to clarify the intention to establish the understanding of having co-operation for business facilitation in the field of agriculture.
He said that he also addressed to Pakistan-Sri Lanka Business Forum, in which he highlighted that Pakistan was the second largest trading partner of Sri Lanka in Asia with bilateral trade volume of 300 million dollars but "our target is one billion dollars in the near future".
Pakistan can help Sri Lanka set up sugar and cement plants in return for import of Sri Lankan produce and manufactures in Pakistan in barter trade. Saleem H. Mandviwalla said Pakistan had offered a soft credit of 200 million dollars to Sri Lanka for exporting, barter trade and easing its business transactions. He mentioned they had a Free Trade Agreement, Bilateral Investments Treaty and Avoidance of Double Taxation to facilitate business communities. He also said the visa regime would be liberalised and business community facilitated to travel.
