Dr. Mirza Ikhtiar Baig (Economist): The main purpose of SIFC is to attract bigger foreign investment and remove all the obstacles for bringing those investments and to facilitate the investors in all possible ways. Starting from getting approvals of NoCs, utilities and provide required infrastructure for the new investment. SIFC is effectively doing all those things, facilitating the larger investment. It is pertinent to mention here the example of Saudi Arabia and UAE. Saudi Arabia has not signed the investment agreements for last 19 years and it was spending because of smaller issues. ISFC in the caretaker government setup, managed removing all obstacles and signing investment agreement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries, paving the way for signing Free Trade Agreements FTA.  

Azerbaijan visit of the President was remarkable and more than 17 different important MoUs were signed in very diversified fields including television operation between the two countries. SIFC had identified the areas where both countries can develop and improve the bilateral trade and investment. President of Azerbaijan recalls his meeting with Nawaz Sharif when he was the Prime Minister, giving a touch of personal visit which consequently turned into a very successful commercial visit.

Good thing is that the regional countries, like members of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, will develop their relationship with Pakistan. They are talking about trade, land road trade, they are talking about infrastructure to link the trade corridor between Pakistan and Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan and they are giving a very effective roadmap on how to go about with this. Opening of airline service between Pakistan and Azerbaijan is also on cards. Azerbaijan also recommended banking channel to facilitate trade activities. To implement these agreements, proper mechanism is in place and a committee is also formed which will look after issues related to these MoUs.

The trade between the two countries has set a target at $2 billion which looks ambitious because presently the total trade is about 100 million dollars which is not much. Different areas could be identified like textile products, home textiles and pharmaceuticals which is much cheaper and of a good quality with less transit cost. With time, all the things will develop and we need to start a beginning from somewhere and this visit have paved the way to start the beginning.