Malaysia is participating in Expo Pakistan 2013 due to be held in September in a big way, said Norsalan Hadi Abdul Kadir, Consul (Trade). Norsalan called on acting FPCCI president Azhar Sayeed Butt the other day here at the Federation House. During the meeting, the FPCCI president said Pakistan was maintaining close trade and bilateral relations with Malaysia since its inception and had been close trade partners. He said though Malaysia counted Pakistan amongst its closest trade partners, there should be more efforts towards enhancing bilateral trade between the two countries. The bilateral trade, he said, was confined to a few commodities only and there were lots of avenues to be explored as far as bilateral trade was concerned. Both sides should take steps to diversify their trade portfolio with each other and provide special incentive to exporters/importers. He said that Malaysia should open its doors to expand Pakistan’s exports. He extended full support of FPCCI which is the apex trade body in Pakistan, for organizing participation in Expo Pakistan, and along the sidelines of the Expo, emphasized the need for increasing the number of trade delegations’ visits between the two countries. He stated that incoming delegations should consist of buyers for items such as surgical equipment, gloves, sports goods, pharmaceutical products, seafood, textile fabric etc. Bashir Janmohammad Chairman Pakistan Malaysia Business Council while presenting his thanks to the honorable Consul General, and said there is a lot of issues to be addressed if we want to see Pakistan-Malaysia trade register a significant increase. He said first of all we should address the imposition of export cess on palm oil exports from Malaysia, the commodity has been made dearer and Pakistan importers are looking towards other sources. Chairman Pak-Malaysia Business Council further said there he had travelled to Kuala Lumpur with a strong Trade Delegation of Pakistani businessmen under the leadership of former CE TDAP Mr. Tariq Puri and they had stressed the need for intra-Government level cooperation to address such issues, but sadly there had been no movement from those quarters. He said until we have exchange of commerce/trade ministers and officials, bilateral trade cannot reach its true potential.
