Pakistani PM calls for Turkish investment in contry
Pakistan’s prime minister yesterday called on Turkish business leaders to invest in a number of the South Asian nation’s industries in Istanbul. The current bilateral trade volume of around $782 million does not “in any way reflect the potential and the opportunities that exist between the countries,” Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Gilani told participants at the meeting hosted by the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey, or DEİK, adding these strong ties had not been transformed into robust trade and economic relations. Gilani called on attendees to consider attractive opportunities for investments in energy, textiles, infrastructure development, agriculture and oil and gas in Pakistan. Noting that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s target is to increase bilateral trade volume to $2 billion by 2012, Gilani said, “We can even go beyond this with joint collaboration.”