I am pleased to extend a very warm welcome to all the delegates from D-8 countries to Islamabad and wish them productive and fruitful deliberations in taking concrete measures to forge close economic ties among ourselves and explore new economic opportunities for our common good and benefit.
I would also like to congratulate Board of Investment for organising D-8 Business Forum on this important occasion. I am confident that the Forum will highlight the unique business opportunities and the huge untapped potential of Pakistan before the business leaders of the participating countries and hope that it would culminate in successful match-making between the business communities of the D-8 countries and our local businessmen. I hope that our respective chambers, trade bodies, Business Councils, Overseas Investors Chambers of Commerce and Industry and other trade bodies would be taking a lead role in establishing mutually beneficial economic equations among the business communities.
Pakistan's strategic location provides the entrepreneurs and manufacturers a great opportunity to reach out to a huge market of over 3 billion in its neighbourhood, in Central Asia and beyond. Specific policies aimed at trade liberalisation and continuity of economic policies have been adopted. These include equal opportunities to local and foreign investors, permission to repatriate capital and profit, transit agreement with Afghanistan, trade liberalisation with India, currency swap agreements with a number of countries and legislation to protect incentives to the investors. Recently a new law called Special Economic Zones has been enacted that gives one time exemption from all custom duties on the import of all capital goods and machinery and tax exemption for ten years. The public-private partnership model adopted by the Government has created a win-win situation for all the stakeholders including the investors.
Pakistan offers immense opportunities in conventional and non-conventional sectors of power generation, agriculture, infrastructure and construction industry. Our huge potential of untapped coal reserves which is estimated at over 185 billion tones, including 175 billion tones identified at Thar, in the Sind province is waiting to be exploited. The city of Karachi alone needs additional half a million housing units per year. The proposed new city of Zulfiqarabad is yet another huge project that offers Great opportunities for investment.
I take this opportunity to invite the business community, investors and entrepreneurs participating in this Forum to explore these huge opportunities and take maximum advantage from business friendly policies of the Government. I, once again, welcome you all to our country and to this Summit and wish this Forum all success in achieving its objectives.