By By our correspondent
This was stated by Kyrgyz Ambassador to Pakistan Bektur Asanov while speaking at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Thursday. LCCI Vice President Faisal Iqbal Sheikh and former president Syed Mohsin Raza Bukhari also spoke on the occasion.
Asanov said the Kyrgyz Republic has a stable political climate and the government understands that foreign private participation and investment are essential to accelerate development and stimulate the economy.
He said promotion of foreign direct investment is the top most priority of the government. He said investing in Kyrgyz Republic is safe, profitable and easy as the main factors are the liberal trade regime, full protection of investments and unlimited repatriation of profits, currency exchange freedom, low business costs, an educated workforce and direct access to state authorities.
The ambassador said Kyrgyz Republic attaches a great importance to development of economic cooperation with Pakistan. The ambassador said in a bid to promote two-way trade, an exhibition dedicated to Pakistani products was being arranged at Bishkek in the end of November. The concept of this exhibition is to attract attention of Kyrgyz customers to the high quality and vast verity Pakistani products.
Speaking on the occasion, the LCCI Vice President Faisal Iqbal Sheikh said despite the fact that Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan enjoy friendly relations, and are tied together under the umbrella of Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) and Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the business and economic relations between the two countries have not developed and calls for joint efforts to foster the pace of trade volume.
He said there was a need to exploit the potential of both the countries and utilize them optimally for mutual benefits. Agriculture and livestock, perhaps is one of the dynamic sectors, common between the economies of the two countries, “where we can pool our resources and expertise to yield maximum results.”
This sector can also help in upgrading the status of agro-based industrial sector like food and food processing and dairy industry. Besides this, there is a lot of scope for collaboration in other sectors like textiles, leather, chemicals, auto parts, transport and communication, oil and gas exploration, hydropower generation, light engineering and financial sector.