Second stage FTA should improve Pakistan’s trade balance with China: ICCI

ISLAMABAD: Ahmed Hassan Moughal, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) on Sunday said that during the current visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to China, Pakistan has signed the 2nd stage of FTA with China, which was a positive development and desired that it should improve Pakistan’s trade balance with China.

He said Pak-China FTA has mostly benefited China as trade balance has always been in favour of China. He said that last year, Pak-China bilateral trade was over $11 billion out of which Pakistan faced trade deficit of $9.7 billion with China which should be a cause of concern for the policymakers.

Ahmed Hassan Moughal said that China was a trillions dollar export market, but Pakistan could not take any significant benefit from it.

He said that in 2018, China’s total imports from around the world were over $2 trillion, but Pakistan’s exports with it were under $2 billion, which were negligible considering the size of China’s market.

He said under second stage of FTA, China has indicated to open up its 90 percent market for Pakistani goods, which augured well for the country.

He stressed that Pakistani exporters should fully capitalise on huge Chinese export market to achieve better results for the economy.

He also stressed that Pakistani manufacturers should further improve quality of their products to improve exports with China.

Rafat Farid Senior Vice President and Iftikhar Anwar Sethi Vice President, ICCI said that in the next stage of CPEC, Pakistan and China have agreed to develop special economic zones in Pakistan that have created new hopes for private sector.

They said that Pakistan and China should expedite the process of developing SEZs under CPEC so that private sectors of both countries could make investments and setup joint ventures in these SEZs that would promote industrialisation, boost exports and create plenty of new jobs in the country.