July 01, 2006	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Sani 4, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, June 30: Shaikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al-Thani, First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of the State of Qatar, on Friday said his country was keen to promote all-around cooperation with Pakistan.

Shaikh Hamad, who called on Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz here, said he his country’s private sector would be keen to invest in Pakistan in view of its economic stability and lucrative investment opportunities its growing economy offered.

He said 56,000 Pakistanis working in Qatar were making useful contribution to the life and economy of his country through hard work and discipline. Qatar was open to having more manpower from Pakistan to benefit from its skills and expertise, he added.

He said the two countries needed to increase the frequency of contacts between their policy makers, businessman and investors, and the two sides had agreed to institutionalise such contacts.

Prime Minister Aziz said increased economic cooperation between Pakistan and Qatar through enhanced trade and investment would lead to richer and more broad-based relations between the two brotherly countries.

He said both the countries had strong diplomatic, political, cultural, defence and security links and shared perception on regional and international issues. Both were also bound in bonds of faith, history, and culture and now needed to move on and develop linkages and inter-dependencies to strengthen the existing cooperation. These relations would grow and prosper if they were geared to be mutually beneficial and win-win for all, he added.

The prime minister said Pakistan had come a long way since 1999 when its economy was in dire straits. He said the size of country’s economy had almost doubled to $135 billion since President Gen Pervez Musharraf had taken over in 1999.

Deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation were the three governing principles of the economic policy which provided level playing field without making any distinction between local and foreign investors, he said.

Mr Aziz said there was a vast potential for increasing the volume of trade and investment between the two countries which would be leveraged as it had been decided to increase transportation and air links between Pakistan and Qatar.

He maintained that transparency and good governance were hallmarks of the government and all major and minor projects were done through the system of open bidding.