ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Kuwait on Thursday agreed on a roadmap for future engagement to strengthen bilateral cooperation, resolve visa issues and develop linkages between Pakistan’s southern port of Gwadar and Kuwait’s Mubarak Al Kabeer Port.
Gwadar, in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, is the crown jewel of China’s $60 billion investment in Belt and Road Initiative projects in Pakistan.
The plan is to turn Gwadar into a trans-shipment hub and megaport to be built alongside special economic zones from which export-focused industries will ship goods worldwide. A web of energy pipelines, roads and rail links will connect Gwadar to China’s western regions.
Mubarak Al Kabeer Port is a proposed project in the largest island in the Kuwaiti coastal island chain, Bubiyan Island. Some economists think the port could eventually become a rival to Iraq’s Umm Qasr.
“We have set ourselves a vision for engagement for the future,” Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a joint press conference in Islamabad with his Kuwaiti counterpart Dr. Ahmed Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah.
“We have looked at areas where investment can be promoted. We looked at developing linkages between Gwadar and Mubarak Al Kabeer Port in Kuwait.”
The Pakistani foreign minister said the volume of bilateral trade between the two countries, which stood at around one billion dollars, “is not up to the potential and there existed a huge room to increase the volume.”
He also appreciated the role of his Kuwaiti counterpart in agreeing on a mechanism to resolve long standing visa issues.
On Wednesday, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Kuwait would resume issuing visas for Pakistanis, suspended in 2011 over security concerns.
“Pakistan and Kuwait agreed to enhance cooperation in all fields of life,” Al-Sabah said at the presser. “There are lots of areas of cooperation which are untapped so this is what we are concentrating on in the new roadmap which is meant to set a target and vision for the future.”
He said he had come to Pakistan to resolve the visa issue and “now through this proposed mechanism, this issue will be solved once and for all.” He said the skilled labor force of Pakistan was contributing immensely to Kuwait’s development and “we are proud of all of them.”
Speaking about Pakistan’s help during the coronavirus pandemic, the Kuwaiti foreign minister said Islamabad had sent highly skilled and professional medical teams to Kuwait “and we are looking for more cooperation in the medical field.”
Al-Sabah also said Kuwait wanted to explore future investment opportunities and enhance bilateral cooperation with Pakistan in the fields of health, education, information technology, petroleum and food security.
“We would like for our relationship to be more institutionalized,” the foreign minister said, “and this was the core of our meetings [in Pakistan].”
