KARACHI, Oct 6: The Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) has estimated that around $690 million worth of export orders are expected to be generated during Expo 2012 which will conclude on Sunday.

Chief executive TDAP Tahir Raza Naqvi said that as per feedback received from the exhibitors, tentative business negotiations of around $350 million have been made on the stalls. Alongside, Pakistani exporters are holding follow up meetings with foreign buyers and are likely to generate another $300 million business deals, he added.

Since one day of the exhibition is left and business deals are in progress the TDAP chief expected the final volume of business deals to reach around $690 million.

Around 1912 business meetings were held between the buyers and the exhibitors, while foreign buyers made about 1,648 visits to different product stalls.

Naqvi said that over 356 exhibitors, who are leading manufacturers and exporters of the country, setup stalls in Expo 2012 compared to 395 exhibitors last year.

Over 710 foreign buyers and importers from 67 countries came for the exhibition, compared with 582 last year.

TDAP secretary Kabir Kazi said that the authority has facilitated foreign buyers with services of interpreters in Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Arabic, German and Russian.

He disclosed that the federal minister for commerce Makhdoom Amin Faheem met with high level delegations from India and Nigeria while TDAP high-ups held several meeting with delegations from Hong Kong, Russia, Egypt, France, Bahrain, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Korea and China.

Beside, he said heads of trade bodies also held meetings with different delegates and also signed memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with counterparts from different countries and their trade bodies.

The TDAP chief disclosed that a Hong Kong based company was negotiating to set-up a power plant with an estimated investment of $20 million.