LAHORE: Korean embassy in Pakistan and Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry have agreed to give intra-trade a new boost through joint ventures between the private sectors of the two countries.
It was agreed at a meeting between Korean ambassador to Pakistan Dr Song Jong-Hwan, the LCCI President Sheikh Muhammad Arshad and Vice President Nasir Saeed here at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Friday.
The Korean ambassador said that trade and economic cooperation between Pakistan and Korea should be enhanced as both countries are potential markets and have the abilities and resources to fulfill each other’s needs.
“Pakistan is a very potential market,” the ambassador said, adding that doing business in country like Pakistan is always very profitable, he told Customs Today on the sidelines of the meeting.
He said that although Korea is 15th largest trading partner of Pakistan at present, however, during the last two years this trade partnership after touching the two-way trade volume at 1.6 billion dollar in 2012 has decreased by 27 percent to 1.17 billion dollars in 2014.
He said that absence of free trade agreement (FTA) between Korea and Pakistan, non-availability of trade related proper information, lack of understanding about most promising areas of cooperation are main possible reasons of this decline.
Speaking on the occasion, the LCCI President Sheikh Muhammad Arshad said that Korea is an important trading partner of Pakistan. South Korea is the second biggest export destination of Pakistan in East Asia after China. It comes at 14th place among the top importing countries and at 16th place among the top exporting countries for Pakistan.
He said that the total volume of trade between Pakistan and Korea was around dollar 1.26 billion in 2013 but in the following year, it came down to almost dollar 1 billion. It was mainly because of the substantial decrease in imports and exports between the two countries. He said that the imports dropped from dollar 859 million to dollar 658 million. Likewise, Pakistan’s exports also fell from dollar 397 million to dollar 378 million in the same period.
LCCI Vice President Nasir Saeed said that both countries have decade’s old economic relations and also experienced good outcomes of joint ventures in various fields like telecommunications, electronics, chemical industry, automobiles industry and construction etc. We need to identify more areas of economic cooperation.
Nasir Saeed said that a lot of development work is going on with respect to Pak-China Economic Corridor. This project will cause to take place a lot of changes in political and economic scenario of Pakistan. Korea should forecast the newer opportunities which really promise good fortunes to foreign investors.
