KARACHI, Nov 19 Pakistan and Turkey enjoy a number of agreements for trade facilitation, but the bilateral trade volume has not yet shown the required growth despite a lot of potential.

This was stated by Consul General of Turkey Fethi Etem at a luncheon meeting, organised by the Small and Medium Enterprises Alliance (SMEA) here on Thursday.

He said that the role of the government was to facilitate trade through agreements like the avoidance of double taxation treaty and mutual protection and promotion of investments.

It was now up to the private sector of both the countries to benefit and increase the bilateral trade.

The Consul General said $741 million trade between the two countries did not reflect the brotherly relations and the real potential.

During a recent visit of the Turkish prime minister to Pakistan, he said, bilateral trade volume was targeted at $2 billion during next two years, which is expected to be achieved.

Responding to a demand made by President of the SMEA Zafar Iqbal, he said that the details for the issuance of business visas was being worked out and hoped that during a week's time it would be finalised.

The Turkish diplomat was reluctant to follow an open policy for issuance of visas and said that there were problems, which do not allow them to adopt such a policy as the illegal migrants use Turkey as a transit route for Europe.

He assured SMEA members that once the details of visas for businessmen were finalised, the Turkish Consulate at Karachi would issue visas within three to four days.

He said there was no unnecessary documentation or no additional information was being asked by his office for issuance of visas as “we have special feelings for our Pakistani brothers”.

Referring to small and medium enterprises Mr Etem said that Turkey's stronger and larger economy mostly dependent on SMEs.

Therefore, he said during last month's visit of the Turkish prime minister, there is a special mention of the SME sector in the agreements reached between the two countries.