ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday invited top Chinese business executives and their companies to invest in Pakistan, highlighting his government’s investment-friendly policies amid Islamabad’s push for sustainable economic growth.
The Pakistani prime minister has been on a visit to China since last week, where he attended a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and held talks with the Chinese leadership, including President Xi Jinping.
On Wednesday, he also attended a Chinese military parade along with Xi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Beijing. The Pakistani prime minister later met senior executives of China’s leading enterprises in Beijing to boost business-to-business (B2B) investment cooperation between the two countries, state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported.
“The discussions focused on expanding cooperation in priority sectors including textiles, information technology, agriculture, industry, mines and minerals, road and digital connectivity, e-commerce and space technologies,” the report said.
Sharif informed the Chinese businessmen about the government’s reforms, which included tax incentives for investors, streamlined visa policies for Chinese nationals and the establishment of dedicated booths at major airports to facilitate ease of travel and business.
“The prime minister emphasized that industrial cooperation remains the cornerstone of Pakistan-China economic cooperation and a defining pillar of the high-quality development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as it enters into its second phase,” the report said.
He stressed that Pakistan offered a “unique comparative advantage” for Chinese investors as compared to other countries, pointing out that the country has a large pool of skilled and cost-effective labor, competitive input costs and strategic connectivity to regional and global markets.
Pakistan considers China a major investor and regional ally. China is Pakistan’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade exceeding $25 billion in recent years, and Chinese companies have already invested heavily in power, transport, infrastructure, and telecoms projects across the country as part of the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project.
However, business cooperation between the two countries has faced setbacks in the form of recent attacks by separatist militants who have targeted Chinese nationals and projects in Pakistan, as well as delays in CPEC projects.
In his meeting with Xi on Tuesday, Sharif assured the Chinese leader his government would “spare no effort” to provide security to Chinese nationals and projects in Pakistan, Chinese state media reported.
