22 January 2004	Thursday	29 Ziqa'ad 1424

KARACHI, Jan 21: The United States Chamber of Commerce has identified South Asia as most favourable region, specially Pakistan for making investments and increasing trade.

Now US business community is least concerned to security conditions in Pakistan as certain incidents occurring here could happen in anywhere in the world.

"Pakistan government was moving positively to curb terrorism," said Managing Director of South Asia Affairs' international division of United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC), Dr Herbert J. Davis during a meeting with Pakistan's business community here at FPCCI Headquarters on Wednesday.

The meeting was attended by a number of members and officials of the FPCCI who discussed investment and trade related developments in both the countries and exchanged information of mutual interest with the delegation. Executive Director of US-Pakistan Business Council Ms Esperanza Gomez accompanied Dr Davis.

Dr Davis noted that Pakistan during last few years had been doing well on macro-economics. "US business community sees the dialogue engagements by Pakistan and India a big breakthrough in South Asia as stability in the region would ensure high rate of returns for them."

South Asian region is more than one billion people market, which is a potential and attractive market for US companies, he said. Dr Davis said a Pakistani delegation would visit Washington in March for semi-annual meeting under the Pakistan-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).

The TIFA is a step forward to free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States. The US has signed TIFA with Pakistan and Sri Lanka, while negotiations were continuing with Bangladesh in this regard.

Dr Davis said he could not say when the US would sign FTA with Pakistan as it mainly depended on liberalized investment laws and taxation policies, supremacy of rule of law and sanctity of contracts in Pakistan and above all deliberations between the two countries.

He said intellectual property rights (IPR) was the main concern of US companies, which were very reluctant to introduce technologies. "Pakistan, however, was doing well on IPR which is very much required for free trade."-APP