KARACHI: Irfan Iqbal Sheikh, President FPCCI, has apprised the entire business, industry and trade community of the country that Pakistan and Scotland have entered into a massive B2B collaboration with Scottish Chamber of Commerce; and, the partnership collaboration agreement will provide Pakistani businesses access to around 15000 Scottish businesses. It is a huge achievement vis-à-vis export promotion, FDI, JVs and B2B linkages, he added.
Pakistani delegation visiting Scotland is headed by Suleman Chawla, SVP FPCCI and includes prominent industrialists from Pakistan; who were also joined by leading businessmen from Scotland, rest of the UK and the EU countries.
Suleman Chawla has said that one of the distinguishing features of the agreement is that 30 regional chambers from Scotland will also take part in commercial activities with Pakistani companies under the agreement. These regional chambers represent some of the major commercial, industrial and financial centres of Scotland; including, but not limited to, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, etc.
It is pertinent to note that Suleman Chawla and Dr Liz Cameron, CEO of Scottish Chambers of Commerce, have signed the agreement in the presence of Syed Zahid Raza, Consul General of Pakistan in Glasgow and other high-ranking diplomats.
Mian Nasser Hyatt Maggo, immediate Past President of FPCCI, explained that the only way possible for Pakistan to cut the grossly unsustainable trade deficit, which clocked at $48.66bn in FY22; build Foreign Exchange Reserves (FER) and reduce Current Account Deficit (CAD), which was $17.4bn in FY22, is to increase our exports on a war-footing and incentivize industrialization.
Imran Khalil Naseer, Chairman of FPCCI’s Pak-UK Business Council (PUKBC), said that Scotland is one of the very few countries of the world with which the country enjoys a bilateral trade surplus as our exports stand at £75m and imports at £14m.
He elaborated that the major sectors that stand to benefit with the new partnership agreement are banking & financial services, including FinTech; capital markets; value-added textiles; hospitality & tourism; Large-Scale Manufacturing (LSM); agriculture & food processing; IT & ITeS and FMCGs.
Imran Khalil Naseer and Muhammad Akhtar, Pakistan’s Trade & Investment Secretary for Scotland, jointly conducted a detailed presentation on the opportunities and prospects for the Scottish investors & entrepreneurs.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022