Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Olzhas Bektenov arrived in the city of Islamabad to participate in the Government session of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, El.kz cites primeminister.kz.
Upon arrival met with Prime Minister of Pakistan Shahbaz Sharif. They discussed the current state and prospects for further development of bilateral trade and economic cooperation, as well as cooperation in the field of digitalisation.
Olzhas Bektenov noted that the Head of State Kassym-Jomart Tokayev paid special attention to the potential of economic cooperation between Kazakhstan and Pakistan. Bilateral trade turnover for 8 months of this year increased by 16%, amounting to about $40 million. To unlock the existing potential, the parties intend to continue diversification of trade turnover. Kazakhstan is ready to increase supplies of 85 commodity items totalling more than $490 million to the Pakistani market, including expanding the range of supplied products of petrochemical, metallurgical, chemical, pharmaceutical industries, as well as food industry and engineering.
Attention was also paid to co-operation in agriculture. The volume of deliveries of Kazakhstani agricultural products for January-August of this year increased almost 2 times, amounting to $7.7 million. Vegetables and grain crops from Kazakhstan are in demand in the Pakistani market. Taking into account the expected high harvest this year, the Government of Kazakhstan is ready to increase the volume of annual supplies to Pakistan up to 2 million tonnes of grain crops.
In the transit-transport sphere, against the background of a three-fold increase in the volume of railway freight traffic and a four-fold increase in transit traffic by road, the heads of government discussed the prospects for further development of the existing multimodal route "Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan" and a new transport corridor "Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan".
Across the whole spectrum of trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian relations, the countries will continue to expand cooperation.