Rana Farrukh
DNA
Islamabad – Africa was the future for the world and Pakistani investors should visit Tanzania to explore JVs and investment in order to capitalize on the emerging business and economic opportunities in the African region. This was observed by Paul F Koyi, President of Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry & Agriculture (TCCIA) while addressing the business community during a visit to Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI).
He visited ICCI along with a delegation of Tanzanian entrepreneurs and exchanged views with SardarYasirIlyas Khan, President ICCI and his team to promote bilateral trade and economic relations with Tanzania and Pakistan. MianAkramFarid Chairman Founder, Abdul Rehman Khan Vice President ICCI, Umar Hussain, OmaisKhattak, Muhammad Shakir, KhursheedBarlas, Khalid Chaudhry and others were also present at the occasion.
Paul F Koyi said that Tanzania was determined to promote business relations with Pakistan and that’s why despite the challenges of Covid-19, Tanzanian business delegation has come to Pakistan to interact with Pakistani counterparts in order to explore business collaborations. He said that there was a disconnection between the private sectors of both countries as for the 3 decades, no Tanzanian delegation had visited Pakistan.
Therefore, more meetings and exchange of delegations were needed to know each other, build confidence and improve trade relations. He said that being agro economies, Pakistan and Tanzania have good potential to cooperate in value addition of agro products. He said both countries should set up joint working groups at government level and a Pak-Tanzania Business Council to promote long-term cooperation between the private sectors of both countries.
Addressing the delegation, SardarYasirIlyas Khan, President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that despite huge potential, Africa was still an unexplored market for Pakistan, however, now Pakistan has made a Look Africa policy to focus on this big market. He said that developing close relations with Tanzania was important for Pakistan to get better penetration into the African market. He said that our neighbours were exporting products worth billions of dollars to Africa in which Pakistan also has competitive advantage. He emphasized that with more focus and strenuous efforts, Pakistan can make a significant increase in its exports to Africa.
He said that Pak-Tanzania bilateral trade of around US$ 154 million in 2019-20 was much below their actual potential and stressed that both countries should focus on promoting business linkages between their private sectors to further improve bilateral trade volume. He said that many Pakistani products including pharmaceuticals, textiles, surgical instruments, sports goods, engineering goods, IT products could find a good market in Tanzania. He identified agriculture, pharmaceuticals, minerals, IT, tourism as potential areas of mutual cooperation between Pakistan and Tanzania. He assured that ICCI would take a delegation to Tanzania to explore JVs and investment.
MianAkramFarid, Chairman Founder Group said that frequent interactions between private sectors and exchange of trade delegations should be the way forward for promoting bilateral trade and economic relations between Pakistan and Tanzania. He said that Tanzania provided Pakistan easy access to the huge African market while Pakistan provided easy access to Tanzania to South Asian market, thus promoting strong bilateral business cooperation should be a high priority of both countries. ICCI and TCCIA also signed an MoUto promote bilateral trade, JVs and investment between Pakistan and Tanzania with joint efforts.
