November 21, 2006	Tuesday	Shawwal 28, 1427

ISLAMABAD Nov 20: There exist great opportunities of mutual cooperation between Pakistan and Romania in a number of areas and Romanian IT firms were keen to enter into joint ventures with Pakistani companies.

This was stated by the visiting Deputy Prime Minister of Romania Bogdan Pascu during a meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Monday. He said Romania will hire Pakistani IT professionals to work in Romania. Underlining the historically close relations existing between Pakistan and Romania, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz emphasized the need to give an economic boost to these ties and further strengthening of cooperation in a broad spectrum of areas, including diplomatic, political, economic, education, IT and telecom and energy sector.

He said as the international system was moving away from geo-politics to geo-economics, economic cooperation, technical exchanges and sharing of human capital is of vital importance and Pakistan and Romania need to explore avenues for further cooperation in these areas.

Pak-Romania Joint Economic Commission need to be further activated to institutionalise and streamline cooperation between the two countries.

The rime minister said the reforms introduced by Pakistan had been rated as one of the most broad-based programmes ever undertaken by a government as they covered every facet of life. As such Pakistan is counted among the top ten reforms countries in the world.

He said that Pakistan had emerged out of a low investment, low growth syndrome and its economy expanded during the last four years, which enabled it to position itself as one of the fastest growing economies of the Asian region

Mr. Bogdan Pascu said his visit to Pakistan was very productive and fruitful and it will result in establishing necessary linkages between the two countries, particularly in the areas of information technology.