Minister for Finance Senator Ishaq Dar participated as panellist in the seminar on "Asia-Europe Economic Cooperation: Fostering Greater Trade and Investment" on the sidelines of ADB''s Annual Board of Governors Meeting here. Other panellists were Liqun Jin, President AIIB; Ulrich Schroder, CEO KFW; Kae Yanagisawa, Vice President JICA; and Stephen P Groff, Vice President ADB. Toby Fildes, Managing Editor of Emerging Markets, moderated the seminar.
The Minister spoke on issues relating to the slowdown in world trade growth impacting Asia-Europe economic cooperation; scaling up of economic cooperation with European countries and its diversification for mutual benefit. The Minister emphasised that Europe and Asia must review their existing arrangements, open up markets by cutting down on tariff and non-tariff barriers. On infrastructure financing, the multilateral development banks must come up with new instruments eg bonds to bridge this gap. He also dwelled upon intellectual property rights and expanding e-commerce.