United News of India
Setting aside political differences, India and Pakistan have decided to change public perception and remove the existing mistrust between the two countries through promotion of trade and business ties.
A two-day meeting of top Indian and Pakistani CEOs and entrepreneurs here, which concluded today, proposed several steps to aggressively pursue the benefits of economic cooperation and identified several sectors having the highest potential for bilateral cooperation.
These include energy, agriculture, health-care, information technology and education.
The conference which was inaugurated by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee yesterday, also urged the governments in both the countries to take all steps necessary to realize the tremendous potential of trade and commerce between the two countries. The meeting noted with concern that South Asia is the world’s least economically integrated region.
Mr Mukherjee, who was the External Affairs Minister when the 26/11, 2008, terror attacks on Mumbai took place, stressed the strong linkage and inter-dependence between peace and sustained economic growth and development of the two countries.
After the two-day deliberations, industry leaders of both the countries agreed that economic cooperation was crucial to peace and progress in a region that has the highest concentration of people living below the poverty line.
The participants said potential existed for the export of home textiles from Pakistan to India while a huge market existed in Pakistan for India’s polyester textiles.
In the field of IT, the fastest growing sector in both countries and the easiest area to cooperate in, India could collaborate with Pakistan by providing skilled resources at competitive rates.
Considerable potential existed for trade in agriculture through streamlining logistics and storage facilities.
The Joint Declaration said India and Pakistan could also collaborate on research for improved yields in, and greater export for, both the countries. In health-care, opportunity for collaboration existed in research and combating the three major diseases in both the countries–heart, diabetes and cancer.
For energy cooperation, the conference said both the countries had huge untapped reserves of energy and collaboration could lend impetus to accelerated growth and development.
In education, given the low average age in both countries (18.2 years in Pakistan and 22.5 years in India), education and skill development was an area of immediate concern and potential.
Cooperation and sharing of strategies in education is the best investment that both the countries can make, the Joint Declaration said.
Committees comprising business leaders from both the countries were established for IT and textile sectors while similar committees for other sectors were in the process of being set up, it added.
News’s Source is http://www.centralchronicle.com/
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