Pakistan, Czech Republicto boost trade relations

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Czech Republic would further boost economic and trade ties between the two countries, a statement said on Thursday.

Khurram Dastgir Khan, Minister for Commerce, visited the Czech Republic from October 24-26 at the invitation of Ing. Jan Mladek, minister of industry and trade of the Czech Republic. Khan also met. Vaclav Zemek, chairman of Czech-Pakistan Inter-Parliamentary Friendship Group at the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic.

The minister informed Zemek about the economic stabilisation and the positive indicators of Pakistan’s economy in the past three and a half year. He welcomed the exchange of parliamentary delegations, trade missions and business delegations of the two countries and stressed to intensify these contacts.

They also discussed huge scope for the private sector companies and emphasized to make efforts for “breaking knowledge barriers” through consistent exchange of delegations.  The minister also called on Lukáš Kaucký, deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and thanked the Czech government for its invaluable support for GSP Plus status in the European Parliament and recapitulated its positive impact on Pakistan’s exports to the EU countries and major contribution to make Pakistan a peaceful, stable and prosperous country.

The deputy minister assured full cooperation for the further promotion of economic and trade ties between the two countries. Khan also met with Vladimir Dlouhy, president of the Czech Chamber of Commerce and they agreed that, keeping in view traditional and historical economic relations between the two countries, there was now imperative need to transform G2G interaction to B2B meetings of the private sector Czech companies in the fields of energy, renewal energies, coal fired power plants, deep coal mining, installation of
small and medium power plants, defence procurement, IT related projects, and up gradation of engineering projects.

The minister also expressed readiness for more participation of Pakistani companies in the international engineering and Styl-Kabo textile fairs to be held in Brno. The president Czech Chamber of Commerce welcomed all these proposals and assured the minister that the Czech Republic would like to diversify traditional Czech markets in Pakistan through active cooperation and facilitation to be extended to the Czech companies.

The minister also met with a group of the Czech companies, who evinced keen interest in the fields of energy, waste water treatment, industrial chemical cleaning, and the installation of
small power plants in Pakistan.

Khan welcomed their areas of expertise and briefed them about the needs of Pakistan and improved economic conditions of Pakistan. He suggested that the Czech companies could capitalize on the favorable investment conditions in Pakistan.

The minister in his meetings underlined the problem being faced by the Pakistani businessmen in getting visas for the Czech Republic. The Czech officials, while acknowledging requirements of the Schengen visa regime, assured the minister to make efforts to address this problem.