Turkish SEZ to come up in Pakistan

At the Pakistan-Turkey Business Forum attended by the prime ministers of both countries, the Board of Investment on Thursday announced that a ‘Turkish Exclusive Special Economic Zone’ would be established in Pakistan.

Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu said that the investors from his country can invest in Pakistan’s textile, energy, transportation, agriculture and other sectors.

Pakistan and Turkey have also agreed to sign a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) to enhance bilateral trade to $10 billion besides inking an additional protocol to strengthen the protection available to Turkish investments in Pakistan.

The existing volume of bilateral trade amounting to $650 million is painful and we have decided to complete negotiations to sign the FTA by June this year to remove the impediments to trade,” said Ahmet Davutoglu, Prime Minister of Turkey, at the Pakistan-Turkey Business Forum.

The Turkish PM said that the goal was to increase bilateral trade to $5 billion in the next three years and then to $10 billion.

The Turkish premier has sought logistics and infrastructure support from Pakistan.

Turkish Minister for Economy Nihat Zeybekci in his speech at the forum said that they do not want to be in competition with Pakistan

In order to complete the negotiations in the minimum possible time, both the countries have decided to use the Malaysian FTA as a base model, said Khurram Dastgir Khan, Federal Minister for Commerce.

An important feature of the forum was business-to-business meetings between Pakistan and 15 private investors from Turkey.

Ten different fields of investments in automotive industry, infrastructure development, energy, air transportation and aerospace, agriculture, electronics and furniture industry were identified during those meetings.