Pakistan eyes $10 billion increase in agri-products trade with China in 5-7 years

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan hopes to increase its trade of agri-products to China by $10 billion in the next five to seven years, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said at a high-level business-to-business conference in Hangzhou on Sunday, stressing the need for both nations to deepen bilateral trade and investment ties. 

Sharif was speaking at the Pakistan-China B2B Investment Conference in Hangzhou, where government officials of both countries and representatives of around 500 Pakistani and Chinese companies had arrived to explore trade and investment cooperation between the two sides. 

Sharif began the first leg of his four-day visit to China on Saturday, which is aimed at deepening economic and technological cooperation between the two countries. His visit also takes place as Pakistan and China recently marked 75 years since the two nations established diplomatic relations this week.

Speaking at the conference, Sharif highlighted that China was importing billions of dollars’ worth agricultural products every year. He noted that Pakistan could provide a larger share of the agricultural products that China needed annually to boost its exports and create more jobs. 

“In the next five to seven years, we expect to increase our agri-products trade to China by about $10 billion,” Sharif said. 

“And this is not a big task, it can be done. It is possible. But we need your support.”

Sharif noted that Pakistan had sent 1,000 Pakistani agricultural graduates to China last year for higher education and training in agriculture and food security areas. 

He called for both countries to speed up cooperation in other sectors, noting that 30 percent of Pakistan and China’s bilateral memorandums of understanding had been converted into agreements. 

“This is, Alhamdulillah, by the grace of god, a very satisfactory progress,” he said. “But I think we need to move with speed and achieve milestones which are need of the hour.

’OPEN FOR BUSINESS’

Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar spoke earlier at the conference, saying that Pakistan had over the past four years achieved economic stabilization. 
 
“Pakistan is open for business. Pakistan is reforming,” he said. “Pakistan is rising.”

He noted that Pakistan and China have signed more than 300 MoUs and nearly three dozen joint ventures whose total value exceeds $13 billion. 

“These are not merely statistics. They are proof of trust, confidence, and shared ambition,” Dar said. 

Sharif later visited the headquarters of the Alibaba Group in the city and met its executive chairman, Joe Tsai. 

“Mr. Tsai said the PM’s description of Pakistan’s digitalization journey was ‘the powerful case for digitalization I have ever heard,’” Sharif’s spokesperson for international media Mosharraf Zaidi said.

The Pakistani premier oversaw the signing of cooperation documents between Pakistan and China on Saturday.

These included a memorandum establishing a sister-province relationship between Punjab and Zhejiang, as well as a document paving the way for a China-Pakistan Joint Technology Research Center at Hangzhou Normal University. 

China is Pakistan’s key strategic ally and a major investor in the South Asian country. Beijing has pledged over $60 billion in investment as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an infrastructure and energy corridor that connects the Arabian Sea to China’s Xinjiang region.