LAHORE: Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Pakistan Nawaf Saeed Ahmad Al-Malkiy Friday made a historic visit to the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry and vowed to make the both brotherly Islamic countries stronger than ever trade partners.
The LCCI Acting President Khawaja Khawar Rasheed, Vice President Zeshan Khalil, former Federal Minister for Information Muhammad Ali Durrani and former LCCI Presidents Mian Shafqat Ali, Zafar Iqbal Chaudhry and Engineer Sohail Lashari also spoke on the occasion. The Ambassador spoke highly on the issues of brotherly relations, strategic and bilateral trade relations between the two countries and said that concrete measures are being taken for enhancement of trade between the two brotherly countries.
“Pakistan is my country, it has a bright future and its progress and prosperity is of entire Muslim Ummah”, the Ambassador said. He said that the people of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have strong and brotherly relations and these would further be strengthened with the exchange of trade and cultural delegations. He said that a delegation of Saudi Commerce Ministry will visit Pakistan soon to negotiate on trade and investment.
He said that there exists enormous scope to expand the economic relations between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. At the same time, Saudi businessmen can be motivated to come and invest in Pakistan to set to invest in various industries which have lucrative opportunities.
He urged the media to show true and beautiful picture of Pakistan to the world that would attract foreign investment towards this heaven.
The LCCI Acting President Khawaja Khawar Rasheed said that Saudi Arabia is important trading partner of Pakistan as it comes at 6th place and 12th place among the top importing and exporting countries for Pakistan respectively. It is worth noticing that Saudi Arabia has the largest economy in the Arab world and the second-largest economy in the region, after Turkey.
He called for solid measures to to expand and promote trade between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia which is following decreasing trend from the last few years. He mentioned that in 2014, the volume of bilateral trade was almost dollar 5 billion but in the following years, a serious slump was witnessed. From 2014 on, the two way trade between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia fell by 30% and 35% which reduced it to dollar 2.2 billion in 2016. He said that That drastic descent was the result of consistent fall in imports and exports figures. The imports from Saudi Arabia contracted by 32% and 39% in last two years whereas the exports decreased by 15% and 12% respectively.
“Petroleum oils consist of almost half of the total imports made from Saudi Arabia. In 2014, Pakistan imported oils worth dollar 2.85 billion which reduced to dollar 870 million in 2016. Similarly, the decline in export of rice to Saudi Arabia caused the value of total exports to plunge from dollar 510 million to dollar 380 million in the same period of time. Pakistan mainly imports oil and oil products from Saudi Arabia, which accounts for 90 percent of our total import bill for the Kingdom. In turn, Pakistan supplies rice, meat, meat products, spices and fruit, home textile products, chemicals, footwear and leather goods. The fact of the matter is that Pakistan caters to a merely 0.3 percent of the import market of Saudi Arabia”, the LCCI Acting President added.
