CHITRAL: Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan should maintain close liaison to tap their tremendous tourism potential and vast mine, mineral and hydropower resources to alleviate poverty, speakers at the Business Conference here on Thursday.

The event was arranged here in Shandur by the Chitral Chamber of Commerce and Industry with the financial assistance of Trade Development Authority of Pakistan.

It was attended by businessmen and officers of the relevant Chitral and GB departments.

Experts say two regions have tremendous tourism potential, vast mineral, hydropower resources

CCCI founding president Sartaj Ahmad Khan told participants that Chitral and GB had linked to each other historically, culturally and socially and they needed to collaborate in economic field as well.

He said GB’s tourism sector was quite developed and therefore, the region needed to share that success story with Chitral for exploiting tourism potential.

Mr Sartaj said Chitral and GB should act together to claim economic benefits offered by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project.

Awais Khan of the KP Economic Zones Development and Management Company said Chitral had huge deposits of marble, granite andgemstones, whose marketability in the world needed to be assessed.

He said the region had lots of fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants, whose market could be developed with the active support of GB, which had made remarkable progress in the sector.

The EZDMC representative said Chitral also had the potential of producing quality honey in large quantity, which a large demand in the national market.

Managing director of Tourism Corporation of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mushtaq Ahmed highlighted the importance of tourism sector and said it had become the major source of national income in many countries and it was second only to oil in the world market in terms of profitability.

He described the efforts of the TCKP in promoting tourism in Chitral and said for holding the Shandur festival this year, it had released Rs40 million, while Baroghil festival would be held next year with delegates from Tajikistan being invited to attend it.

He said Chitral had many tourist attractions, including primitive Kalash culture, mountains, interesting sights, and tracks in the foothold of Hindu Kush system of mountains.

Mr Mushtaq said Chitral hosted more than 200 peaks of the mountain with an altitude of more than 6000 meters.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2018