PR No. 224/2022

Islamabad, 21 October 2022: President Dr Arif Alvi has emphasized the need for enhancing bilateral trade with France, adding that the bilateral trade volume of US$ 1.8 billion (2021) was well below the potential of trade between the two countries. He called for holding regular meetings of all bilateral mechanisms and urged the need to explore more opportunities for commercial collaboration, especially in the fields of IT, start-ups, agriculture and livestock.

The President expressed these views while talking to Pakistan’s Ambassador-designate to France, Mr Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, who called on him, at Aiwan-e-Sadr, today.

Talking to the Ambassador, the President appreciated that in the aftermath of devastating floods in Pakistan, French President Emmanuel Macron had announced relief support for flood-affected people.

The President asked the Ambassador-designate to work with the French side to hold the inaugural session of the Joint Economic Commission at the earliest, as it would be useful to boost the bilateral economic relationship. He urged the need to work on arranging a visit by MEDEF (French business association) to Pakistan in the coming months, which would help strengthen trade and investment relations between the two countries and bring more French companies and capital to Pakistan.

The President said that France had been an important partner of Pakistan in Europe as both the countries share multifaceted relations, cooperate in diverse areas including political, trade and economic, defence, education, and culture, and maintain close liaison at the international fora.

The President underlined the need to learn from the French experience in fashion design, high-end fashion products, agriculture and IT fields. He said that there was a great scope for accelerating the existing cooperation between the two countries in the fields of pharmaceuticals, electronic machinery parts, dairy products, organic chemicals, paper and paper board and articles of iron and steel etc.

The President also highlighted that higher education was an important area of bilateral cooperation and the Ambassador-designate should make efforts to include technical education and enhance French scholarships for Pakistani students to study in French universities. He said for the last eight years, the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) had an ongoing scholarship program to enable Pakistani students to pursue higher studies in France.

The President asked the Ambassador-designate to sensitize the leadership of France on the urgency to resolve the Kashmir dispute as per various resolutions of the UN Security Council and also on the increasing trend of marginalizing the minorities in India and Islamophobia, which had put the lives and livelihoods of the minorities, especially the Muslims, under great stress.  

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