September 3, 2002	Tuesday	Jamadi-us-Saani24,1423

ISLAMABAD, Sept 2: Pakistan and Azerbaijan have decided to substantially enhance trade and economic relations specially by first improving their present weak air and road links.

Speaking at a joint news conference, here on Monday, the visiting Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan Yaqub Eyyubov and Minister for Commerce Razak Dawood said that the current poor level of trade will be impressively improved to benefit the people of both the countries.

“My aim of being in Pakistan is to deeper economic cooperation between the two countries”, Eyyubov said. He said that his country was interested to import a number of products from Pakistan including textiles and sugar.

“There is a very low level of just $2 million annual trade between our two countries which urgently needs to be improved”, said Razak Dawood.

Razak said that air and road links will have to be first improved to have some meaningful trade between the countries. Currently, he said Azerbaijan was trading through trucking via Iran.

“But we have now offered them Karachi as a trading hoard for Azerbaijani goods for onward export to Far Eastern countries”, said Razak.

Chairman Board of Investment (BoI) Wasim Haqqie later told reporters that Pakistan could import cotton from Azerbaijan. “Currently they are producing less than one million bales of cotton and are interested to export it to Pakistan”, he said.

However, he said that major task was the restoration of communication links between the two countries for improving trade and economic cooperation.

Haqqie said that Azerbaijan was a country of one million people and its economy was based on 45 per cent services, 33 per cent industries and 22 per cent agriculture. “Its total GDP is $23 billion”, he said hoping that both sides will keep meeting for forging better trade and economic ties.

The second session of two-day Pak-Azerbaijan Joint Ministerial Commission was also held on Monday. Azeri Deputy Prime Minister Yaqub Eyyubov and Minister for Privatization Altaf M. Saleem led their respective delegations.

The meeting adopted a broad-based agenda and identified bright prospects of mutually beneficial cooperation that existed in the banking, finance, agriculture, education, science & information technology, oil & gas, tourism, culture and investment sectors.

Saleem Altaf while opening the meeting said that the existing ties between the two countries provided a basis for further broadening the economic cooperation and exploring new avenues of interaction in various spheres of life.

Giving an economic overview of Pakistan, he said that the country had made significant achievements during the past three years as a result of restructuring and reforming the socio-economic sectors. It required high credibility in the tax, trade, tariff, financial, capital markets, deregulation, privatization and civil services areas.