President SAARC Chamber to visit Pakistan from December 5
ISLAMABAD, (MILLAT ONLINE):President, SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SAARC CCI) Suraj Vaidya will arrive here on December 5 (Tuesday) on a five-day visit to Pakistan.
He is scheduled to meet local business community and government officials to accelerate the efforts of the SAARC chamber in promoting economic, trade and investment linkages across the region.
In a statement issued here on Monday Vice President SAARC CCI Iftikhar Ali Malik
said that Suraj Vaidya is a leading industrialist and investor from Nepal, is due to arrive in Karachi on Tuesday where he will meet with business community and later arrive in Islamabad on December 06.
During his stay here he is likely to meet important government officials and trade leaders.
He said President SAARC Chamber assured that being President of SAARC CCI his focus will continue to priorities better connectivity and establishment of SAARC industrial parks for better investment facilitation.
He said there is dire need of hour to utilize this platform to bring prosperity in the region. “If we utilize our potential in its true order, our region could make higher pace of development within next decades although currently it is lagging behind in terms of development” he added.
He said that the private sector of the region is committed to socio economic integration of South Asia. He said that the business community of the region believes in harmony and advocates regional economic integration to address the major challenges the region faces including job creation and poverty.
Iftikhar Ali Malik said despite of the intense proximity the South Asian region is the least connected region in the world and there is need to work for eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers.
Iftikhar Malik stressed that there is a huge potential for a country like Pakistan to benefit from regional integration. “Several issues including restricted coverage of the trade agreement, poor physical infrastructure, and inadequate trade facilitation have also minimised the relevance of the trade pact,” adding he said Pakistan was fully committed to promote regional cooperation. However, he added a combined effort by all member states was required to achieve the objectives.
To integrate the region, he said the CPEC is a vision and a roadmap of regional development and complements the other regional connectivity initiatives as CPEC would benefit the whole SAARC region, adding that the only viable way to uplift the downtrodden strata of the SAARC region is to make joint efforts.