Business Community of Islamabad on Monday expressed pleasure to learn that 13th summit of Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) will be held in Islamabad. The summit will begin on March 1.
The business community leaders expressed the hope that the conference would play an important role in promotion of enhanced cooperation between the member countries.
“Pakistan will host the ECO summit, which can play important role in enhancing the cooperation between the member countries”, Senior Vice President ICCI Khalid Malik told APP.
He said that the ECO had provided a platform to the member states for improving development and promoting trade and investment opportunities between the member states.
The member states of the organisation include Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
The ICCI SVP said the organisation had huge potential to emerge as new economic bloc for the benefit of the people in the region.
He said that the ECO had now been expanded and comprises 10 member states.
The vice president said that all five Central Asian States (CARs) were also the member of ECO. “Pakistan has huge potential to enhance the trade with these countries”, he said, adding that the energy rich CARs would play important role by providing support in energy sector for local industries.
Khalid Malik said that Pakistan’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with Iran and Turkey were also in negotiation phase, adding that ECO would be proved as remarkable forum to discuss the issues of trade and enhancing bilateral trade with these countries.
On the occasion, former ICCI president ICCI Zafar Bukhtawri said that Pakistan would have huge trade opportunity to share with ECO countries in order to boost Pakistan’s exports.
He called for enhancing the multilateral trade and export volumes with energy rich Central Asian States (CARs).
