After 13 years, German airline interested in resuming flights to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: German airliner Lufthansa has expressed its keen interest to resume its passenger and cargo flight operations in Pakistan what the company says it halted 13 years ago due to commercial reasons.

Another German company Weidmüller also announced to start a production plant in Pakistan in near future. The company is specializing in the transmission of power, signals and data in industrial environments.

A high-level business delegation from Germany held a meeting with Secretary Board of Investment (BOI), Fareena Mazhar and expressed their interest in dairy industry, communication, automobile and service sector for investment in Pakistan.

A business delegate representing Lufthansa shared that it was keen on resuming flight operations in Pakistan. A meeting with the Minister for Aviation was arranges by Secretary BoI to materialize this plan.

The delegation comprised 16 members, headed by Oliver Oehms, CEO AHK Dubai. It included several German business giants like Lufthansa, AHK, SIG MEA, Weidmuller Middle, Emltc Emerging Solutions among others. All these companies have prominent presence in most parts of the world and are visiting Pakistan to analyze the business climate and explore lucrative investment opportunities in Pakistan.

The visit has come about as an encouraging prospect for Pakistan in terms of attracting new investment in several sectors and has been termed as a positive sign for the country’s economy by Secretary BOI.

BOI executive Fareena briefed the delegation on Pakistan’s investment policy, which has been formulated to create an investor friendly environment to attract foreign direct investment and provide equal treatment to foreign and local investors.

She mentioned Food Processing, Automotive, IT, Energy, Textiles, Logistics and Housing & Construction sectors as some of the potential sectors for investment in Pakistan. She further added that BOI is leading the “Pakistan Regulatory Modernization Initiative” (PRMI), which the Prime Minister has launched in order to make the regulatory environment friendly and that it shall transform the regulatory landscape across all tiers of government; federal, provincial and local.

Fareena highlighted the tax incentives available to investors in the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and mentioned the 22 SEZs approved by BOI across Pakistan including Allam Iqbal Industrial city, Rashakai SEZ, Khairpur SEZ, M3 Industrial City Faisalabad, National Science & technology Park, Hattar SEZ etc.

Discussing the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) reforms during the interaction, the Fareena underlined Pakistan’s improvement of 39 positions in EODB index and shared that she was confident that the rating would further improve in World Bank’s doing business Report of 2021.

Expressing her satisfaction on the total trade volume worth $2.659 billion, she said that she was optimistic about further improvement in business volume between the two countries in foreseeable future.