ISLAMABAD, May 19: Pakistan has good industrial potentials for penetrating into the international market and should make research studies to pinpoint better quality and cheap products for making inroads.

These observations were made by Johann Klomfass, German commercial and development counsellor, during a meeting with Imtiaz Rastgar, vice-chairman and CEO of the Engineering Development Board (EDB), says a press release.

Imtiaz Rastgar said the EDB wanted to build a Pakistan-German automotive supply network, providing opportunities to Pakistani automotive vendor enterprises to benefit from the German know-how and technology to improve quality, productivity, developing and marketing of value-added products.

It also aimed to enter into project specific alliance with German automotive vendor enterprises for trading and joint venture projects, he said, adding that as a first step in this direction, the EDB had planned mapping study of the automotive sector to address the issues like supply industry, technology, production and demand levels, geographically distribution of the industry, key uncertainties, skill level, industry’s strengths and weaknesses, deficiencies of suppliers and their core competence key success factors and regulatory environment.

Mr Rastgar said that this would be an in-depth analysis of the current situation and would highlight the factors that were likely to shape the future of automotive manufacturing in Pakistan. In addition, the study is required to attract players from Germany as well as from other countries to develop business with the Pakistani counterparts, the German diplomat was told.

Specialists from Germany would be conducting this study and would also present it to the German automotive industry. Ways and means of Pakistan-German cooperation for conducting the study were also discussed.

The German diplomat was also briefed about Pakistan’s participation in the Hannover Fair 2006.