Danish envoy envisions enhanced cooperation with Pakistan

Pakistan is facing a number of challenges on many fronts but it is heartening to see the way it is coming to grips with them.

These views were expressed by the newly appointed Danish ambassador to Pakistan, Rolf Holmboe, in an informal chat with mediafolk on his visit to the Karachi Press Club on Sunday evening.

According to the ambassador, the biggest challenge Pakistan currently faced was the energy crisis. Citing Denmark’s example, he said that it would be rather unwise to depend solely on the conventional sources of energy, as, he said, oil and gas prices would continually go up.

So, he said, to deal with the problem, Denmark resorted to non-conventional and revolutionary methods like wind and solar power, with the result that today the country was producing 100,000 megawatts of wind power from these non-conventional sources.

The production cost, he said, was just two cents a unit. This, he said, was perhaps the lowest power production cost known this far. Pakistan, he said, had a long coastline and as such availability of wind would be no problem. Pakistan had a profusion of sunlight and was a very sunny place. “So why should Pakistan not utilise these two sources to its advantage?” he queried.

He held out the assurance that Denmark would go all out to cooperate with Pakistan in the endeavour. As for the health sector, he said that Pakistan had an alarming incidence of disorders like diabetes mellitus and said that certain Danish companies were negotiating cooperation with the government of Punjab for addressing the situation.

As for the transfer of technology, the Danish ambassador was highly disposed to the idea and said that it was up to the Pakistani companies to effect this technology transfer through cooperation with their foreign counterparts.

Questioned profusely on the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), he said that in principle, Denmark favoured it but said that Pakistani companies would have to play a dynamic role in the form of assimilation of technology and other innovative ideas to make Pakistan’s participation worthwhile.

He said he was highly impressed by the Pakistani media and said he could never imagine that the press in Pakistan could assume such a bold stance on issues. He expressed thorough appreciation of the Pakistani press.

The crux of his talk was that it was the private companies that would have to play the key role in the development effort. Acquainting the media with Denmark in general, he said that democracy took at least a hundred years to evolve to its present state in the country. He said this was because we strongly and earnestly believed in the inalienable rights of the individual, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. “We are firm advocates of a plurality of views.” His talk was followed by an animated question-answer session. Later, the envoy and his entourage were presented with traditional Sindhi Ajraks.