PESHAWAR: The representatives of Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Uzbekistan government here on Wednesday agreed to improve bilateral trade by exchanging delegations of traders, organising business exhibitions and taking benefits from each other experiences.

In this connection a meeting was held between Uzbekistan Deputy Chairman Railways, Coal and Mineral Khayitboy A Omonov and SCCI president Sherbaz Bilour, said a statement.

Besides other senior businesspersons, SCCI senior vice president Manzoor Elahi, vice president Junaid Altaf, and former president Faiz Mohammad also attended the meeting.

The SCCI chief said that Pakistan and Uzbekistan should initiate joint ventures and programmes to fully exploit the potentials and opportunities. He said that sharing experiences between them would strengthen the economies of both the states.

He said that a joint mechanism should be evolved to remove hurdles to bilateral trade between Pakistan and Uzbekistan as well as the rest of the regional countries.

Mr Bilour said that huge potential existed to enhance mutual trade and economic relations between Pakistan and Uzbekistan.

However, he stressed the need for formulating a joint mechanism and making serious efforts by both the countries to remove the problems that were impeding bilateral trade between them.

Other participants on the occasion identified the bottlenecks that were impeding trade relations between Pakistan and Uzbekistan and other central Asian countries. They underlined the importance of joint efforts to address those issues.

They said that it was need of the hour to enhance bilateral trade between Pakistan and regional countries.

They added that enhanced trade with regional countries would improve the country’s economy and reduce current trade deficit.

Khayitboy A Omonov in his speech said that his country wanted to further improve bilateral trade and economic relations with Pakistan. However, he said that both the countries should take serious efforts in that regard.

Earlier, SCCI office-bearers pointed out impediments and problems in the way of bilateral trade and presented a number of proposals to strengthen the regional economy.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2020