| A Delegation from China Council for Promotion of International Trade Visits FPCCI |
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| Monday,April 03,2006 Posted: 12:52 BJT(0452 GMT) The Commercial Office |
KARACHI: An agreement was reached on Saturday between Pakistan-China Business Council of FPCCI and the China Council for Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) to hold the second joint meeting in China at a mutually agreed date this year.
Syed Mazhar Ali Nasir, Chairman, Pakistan-China Business Council and Wang Zhingzhen, Assistant Chairman, CCPIT, Beijing held a meeting at the Federation House.
Mazhar, who led the Pak-China Business Council team, also announced that the site for the opening of FPCCI Liaison Office in China would be selected within one month and a Chinese national well conversant with English would be hired through advertisements. He said that the joint meeting of Pakistan-China Business Council would identify problems and bottlenecks being faced by the businessmen of both the countries in promoting bilateral trade. A report in this regard would be submitted to the respective governments for remedy.
Shahid Mehmood, Commercial Counselor of Pakistan in China made a presentation on ‘Pakistan-China Early Harvest Programme (EHP) under Free Trade Agreement’, signed in April 2005, and announced that the programme has become effective from January 2006.
Under EHP a common list of 31 four-digit items and unilateral lists of 52 four-digit items have been agreed. The items under common list whose tariff was more than 15 per cent will be reduced to 10 per cent in 2006, 5 per cent in 2007 and 0 per cent in 2008; while the items under unilateral lists whose tariff was between 5 per cent and 15 per cent will be reduced to 5 per cent in 2006 and 0 per cent in 2007, while 575 items under PTA whose duty was less than 5 per cent will be reduced to 0 per cent in 2006.
He mentioned that the common list under EHP includes fruits and vegetables (mangoes, citrus, dates, garlic etc.), stone material etc. while unilateral list for Pakistani products includes guar gum, industrial alcohol, cotton and blended fabrics, home textiles, instruments, cutlery, sports goods etc. While the unilateral list for Chinese products includes machinery items and chemicals.
Wang Zhingzhen said that Pakistan and China enjoy good friendly relations and hoped that economic cooperation and trade between then will grow in coming years. He said that the bilateral trade, which was $1 billion in the year 2000 has increased to $4.2 billion in 2005 and investment of $100 million has been made by Chinese companies in Pakistan, which is not a big amount but there is a potential for higher growth.
He said that with the implementation of open door policy the business environment has improved in China. Over 3,000 laws will be modified.
According to a survey 80 per cent of the American investors in China feel comfortable. The taxes in China have been gradually reduced. Now tax on agriculture was 15 per cent and on industry 9 per cent under the economic plan approved by the Chinese Congress. The annual GDP growth of 7.5 per cent will be maintained and energy consumption will be reduced by 20 per cent during next five years.
He said that $50 billion investment was made in 10,000 projects by China last year out of which $6 billion investment was made in Asian countries.
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Bilateral Visits
