ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s finance minister, Muhammad Aurangzeb, on Friday held virtual talks with a Saudi business delegation, currently on a visit to Pakistan, highlighting the country’s economic reforms and investment opportunities it offered to investors.
A 16-member Saudi delegation, led by Prince Mansour bin Mohammed bin Saad Al-Saud, is currently visiting Pakistan amid efforts from the two countries to boost economic cooperation.
The delegation, which arrived late Tuesday, held a series of meetings with federal ministers and received detailed presentations from the Special Investment Facilitation Council (SIFC) and Pakistani firms.
On Friday, Aurangzeb held a virtual meeting with Saudi delegates as well as members of the Pakistan Business Council and the Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce & Industry (OICCI).
“The visit of the Saudi delegation is very timely,” the minister said, adding his government would make sure “our existing investors also work in a good environment, and we don’t go through the boom-and-bust [like] in the previous years.”
Aurangzeb pointed out agriculture, mining, information technology (IT), pharmaceutical and tourism as some of the areas of mutual interest. He said there are two areas which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is leading himself in and take stock on a weekly basis.
“One is our taxation reform, and everything that is going on in terms of people, process, technology, to get the sort of the fiscal side of things moving forward,” he said.
“The second one... is our digital journey and moving toward cashless economy, because both of these are actually interrelated.”
The finance minister urged the Saudi business delegation to explore opportunities in these and other sectors of Pakistan’s $411 billion economy.
The development came a day after the visiting Saudi business delegation signed two memorandums of understanding (MoUs) to strengthen investment in Karachi’s energy sector as Riyadh seeks deeper economic engagement with Pakistan under its Vision 2030 initiative.
The delegation, led by Prince Mansour who is the chairman of the Saudi-Pakistan Joint Business Council, finalized a share-sale agreement in KES Power Limited and a cooperation framework between K-Electric and Trident Energy Limited to explore new investment in Pakistan’s power and infrastructure markets.
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have close religious, cultural, diplomatic and strategic ties, particularly in trade and defense. Last year, the two countries signed 34 agreements worth nearly $3 billion, of which, memorandums of understanding (MoUs) worth $700 million have already entered the implementation stage, according to Pakistani officials.
