Islamabad, Oct 26 (TNS): Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Friday addressed a press conference in Islamabad and briefed the media persons about his meeting with a high-level delegation of United Arab Emirates (UAE) officials.
The minister said that the delegation is visiting Pakistan under direct orders from UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed.
“The UAE delegation said the bilateral relations are very old but there was a dip in the last 4-5 years,” Qureshi said. “In today’s meeting, we discussed measures to expand the economic side of our longstanding bilateral ties.”
“First, in the agriculture sector, we discussed how we could increase our exports to the UAE. We have an exportable surplus in rice, which we used to export but in the last few years, our exports have decreased.”
“In fruits, I discussed with them citrus and mangoes. We have both in abundance and there is demand in UAE too. Due to our proximity, this can easily be exported too even if this is a perishable item,” the foreign minister said, adding that the UAE has an “effective way of processing and packaging food, so we discussed how we could benefit from their expertise”.
“Pakistan’s location is such that a state-of-the-art LNG terminal can be set up here, and Pakistan can become a hub. We have also discussed this,” Qureshi said.
The foreign minister said Pakistan imports more petroleum products from UAE than from Saudi Arabia. “The government is trying to work out a working plan with the UAE government for enabling delayed payments for petroleum products, similar to that with the Saudi government,” he said.
Qureshi said a member of UAE’s real-estate development company Emaar was also part of the delegation, “we told them that the government was planning to build five million houses, and asked them if they could help us with that”.
