August 22, 2003	Friday	Jumadi-us-Sani 23, 1424

ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: Pakistan and Indonesia will revive the Joint Ministerial Committee to promote further trade and economic relations between the two countries and facilitate the private sector.

This was discussed during a meeting between Minister for Privatization and Investment Dr. Hafeez Shaikh and the visiting Indonesian delegation led by Ms Rini M. Sumarno Soewandi, Indonesian Minister for Trade & Industry, here on Thursday.

Dr. Hafeez Shaikh said that the exchange of business delegation from both the countries would facilitate the private sector to identify their areas of interest, open new avenues for economic interaction and provide maximum opportunities for increasing and improving the volume of trade and investment.

There was a need to make efforts for reducing the cost of doing business between the two countries by extending direct air and sea links, he added.

Dr. Hafeez while extending the invitation to the Indonesian minister for participating in the Lahore Investment Conference scheduled in February 2004 stated that it would further strengthen and improve our relations and bring closer the people of both the countries.

A proposal to hold Joint Investment Conferences at Pakistan and Indonesia was also discussed.

While highlighting the salient features of privatization and investment programmes and policies, the minister said that Pakistan had focused upon an ambitious privatization programme by implementing the two tier strategy for privatization of state owned entities.

We were in the process of making our policies more investment friendly, as there was no restriction on foreign investors as regard to equity, having local partners or repatriating their profit or investment, the minister said.

Ms. Rini while stressing the need to improve the role of private sector said her visit was focussed to identify the possible cooperation for accelerating our economic relations.

We were in the process of purchasing sugar factories from Pakistan as our factories had become very old.—APP