FPCCI President Zakaria Usman said that Pakistan was playing leading role in different regional platforms and having their headquarters here like SAARC Chamber of Commerce, D8 Chamber of Commerce, Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Islamic Chamber of Commerce.
The chairmanship of the ECO Chamber of Commerce will be transferred to Pakistan in next month for next three years. Moreover, Pakistan is one of those countries which have great potential for trade with other countries as it has specialised in different fields like textile, surgical, sports and leather and diversifying its exports from traditional to non-traditional items.
Zakaria Usman further said that the American GSP status to Pakistan had been expired since a long time but still they were waiting for the revival of the GSP status. The USA government should realise that Pakistan was battling terrorism and Army was fighting a decisive battle in North Waziristan to eliminate terrorism and the country was incurring huge expenses on war against terrorism besides the issue of settlement of IDPs, he added.
Moreover, they were facing shortage of energy due to which unemployment in the country had prevailed and ultimately it had created law and order situation, but they had achieved their exports targets, he maintained. He said it was not understandable that why the American government had not yet revived the GSP status to Pakistan.
The political and economic chief of the US Consulate General said after the airport incident in Karachi the mind setup of foreign businessmen changed which obviously shadowed negative impact of the bilateral trade of Pakistan with other countries.
He further said that Pakistani fresh fruits were very famous in USA and it had a big capacity to fill the need of American, EU market and Central Asian markets. Responding to the concerns of the FPCCI president about GSP status, he said it was discretion of the American Congress to decide, however, he would strongly support the vision of FPCCI to his government.
